Day 14 - 15 - Cobboboonee National Park to Panmure via Warrnambool

Friday 14 February - Cobboboonee to Warrnambool and Panmure

We got up just before 7 to start the packup from Cobboboonee National Park as we needed to be in Warrnambool by about 10:30. The washing from the night before hadn't quite dried, but we hoped (unsuccessfully it turned out) to dry it later that day.



We made good time and arrived just before 10. I went to Warrnambool in 2002 for a Preaching Weekend so it was nice to be back, although I can't say any of it struck me as familiar. Either we were in a different part of town, or it's changed

sufficiently over the years to look quite different.

After our appointment and making some lunch, the first stop was to service the van's fluids - refilling fresh water and emptying waste, but we had a couple of dead ends where the WikiCamps app showed us a water facility but it turned out to be a water bottle refilling station, not something suitable for a van! WikiCamps had shown some facilities inside a caravan park, but we were looking for public facilities so we went to the Information Centre for advice.

Warrnambool Information Centre. © Google

Information Centres in our experience are an oft-overlooked source of information - people frequently refer to this app or that app, TripAdvisor's "Top 10 things to do in town xyz" or other similar things, but often the local information centre is the best bet. They can very quickly suggest things which are suitable for your interests, family size, budget, and the things that are right for you might not always things which might be on the Top 10 list of things assembled by people with different needs to you. A case in point was in Carnarvon on our trip last year - we only had about two hours there, but the Information Centre sent us on the 'Fruit Loop' - a short drive past a series of roadside stalls selling fresh seasonal fruit. This was where we first tasted Black Sapote which looks like a large green tomato but had a dark chocolate coloured inside and tastes like a mixture between mango and fig & avocado texture. It was quite nice. The kids didn't like it much but Mim & I quite liked it.

Aaaaanyway, I digress. They told us there the only facility was indeed inside the caravan park but it was open to the public, not just to users of the park. Presumably the council has made some arrangement for public use of their facilities.

Flagstaff Hill Maritime Village. © TripAdvisor.com

But while we were there they told us about some of their other attractions, including the amazing-looking Flagstaff Hill Village attached to the maritime museum. This is a bit like a working pioneer village, but specifically following the maritime history of Australia on the south coast. It looked really interesting and we would not have thought to go there otherwise. In the end we didn't go (bit of an anticlimax there!) as the timing wasn't quite going to work out for us but it's a case in point about things they can tell you about you may have otherwise missed.

Panmure campground

So we sorted out the van and then since it was pretty dreary weather and time was getting on, we decided to head straight out to our camp spot for the night, which was a free camp in Panmure, about 25km north-east of Warrrambool. The weather continued to deteriorate and we had some very heavy rain on the way out, and in the evening it faded to a fine drizzle.

The Panmure campground had great reports from a couple of fellow travellers we'd spoken to so we stayed here for two nights. It certainly had decent facilities - flushing toilets, BBQ area, rainwater on tap and plenty of parking, but unfortunately it seemed to attract backpackers who showed little consideration to their fellow campers, making lots of noise and playing music late at night. So we didn't have the best sleep our first night.

Saturday 15 February - Panmure

The weather was still pretty ordinary so we had a nice morning in the van. Hot breakfast first up of bacon and eggs and then we played board games and card games. The kids did some colouring, reading and drawing while we did some work.

 

Mim discovered this giant fly. It's the biggest fly we've ever seen.

Thanks to the rain, our observant Matthew noticed that one of our gas bottles was leaking! :o

Gas bubbles from a leaking gas bottle - not ideal!

It had a few pinholes around the welded edge which were letting gas escape slowly. Fortunately it was a slow leak, the gas is denser than air (so we weren't going to be asphyxiated in our beds) and the bottle was well away from any flames, but it wasn't ideal. I phoned Elgas (the gas company who runs Swap 'n' Go) and they said we could just swap it over at a depot or an exchange place.


Later on in the day the weather had cleared up enough to go for a walk. We had run low on butter/marg so decided to go the local general store and see what they had. On the way we discovered that they also did Swap 'n' Go gas bottle exchange, and asked the general store lady if it was something she could help with. The general store lady seemed to indicate she would do but didn't say anything about us having to pay to hand in a full faulty bottle and have it replaced with a full non-faulty bottle! Later the next day when we took the bottle down she said we would need to pay. So we just bought some marg and a tin of milo and walked back.

On our way back from the the general store we decided to explore a little bit around the camp ground as one of the photos on WikiCamps indicated there was a diving board into what looked like a larger lake/pond thing. We found the spot and came across couple trying to fish with some really cute dogs.  Of course the kids loved having a play with the dogs as our dog Shadow is back home with a lovely friend of ours. The mother dog was an Australian sheep dog cross Border Collie and the 6 week old puppy was a mix of its mum and a kelpie dad. Soooo cute but very energetic! 

We walked back to the van along the creek which was very picturesque, had a delicious dinner and got an early night.

-- Greg