Marg and Darryl's Travel Adventures: Braving the cold ❄️☔️

We had an interesting journey through pretty countryside to Longford where we fuelled up, bought some groceries (and Tops even had time to buy a jumper!) and ended up buying lunch. Dennis at last had pie success and loved his mushroom pie - a change for him after some awful pies in Queensland. We then climbed up 1200 metres to the Great Lakes tiers and found this campsite at Lake Sorell. It's pretty much just a bush camp that probably once was well maintained but now has been let go and is quite delelict. There is only one other camper so we pretty much have it to ourselves. The Lake is closed for fishing & boating as they are trying to reduce carp numbers - so that's why it's quiet. We set up eventually making sure we wouldn't be in shade in the morning but turns out that's irrelevant as there's no sun thismorning at all - only rain ☔️.

Last night was cold despite having a big campfire and we were early in bed. Luckily we were as warm as toast in bed.

We did however have a few disasters in the evening - firstly we decided to cook a camp oven roast seeing we had the open fire and were looking forward to enjoying that - but the fire was too hot and we enjoyed charcoal chicken instead! Then for the second time, my glass of red wine tipped over me and my chair - I certainly wasn't under the weather so am blaming my top - heavy glass. Anyway I'm using another one tonight to be sure. 🍷

Then we noticed Darryl doing a war dance around his own fire and learned his butane heater was on fire! He kindly had it on to warm up our camper for me but the gas ran out so he had to put a new canister in. Fortunately, he was wary of this type of gas appliance and took it outside to put the new one in - but it kept leaking gas - and suddenly burst into flames! Lucky he had his Blundstone boots on and was able to kick the canister away - seeing buckets of water did nothing to quench the flames. Once the canister was away, the fire went out. So that could have been a serious disaster - if he was in our camper we'd be sleeping with Dennis and Tops from now on and if he'd not been able to kick the canister away, it could have exploded and injured him! Needless to say we won't be using that again or buying another one! He checked it out thismorning and its a fault in the heater so for everyone that's a warning to be wary of these appliances!

Use the heater on the right - not the left!!

We've christened the rain gauge (thanks Scott & Berny) and had 10mm from 4am thismorning and its still dreary and wet so unless the sun comes out, we are stuck here for the time being! Shades of Barrington Tops! One day we'll learn that altitude = rain and cold!!

Well, we made a snap decision to make the most of a clear patch and quickly pack up and move on. We were scampering around like mad things and were driving out in record time. We've come to a little place called Hamilton and set up by the river Clyde - and the sun is shining and its 14 degrees - positively warm!! ☀️ We'll use this as a base to do day trips to the Franklin - Gordon Wilderness area. We don't fancy camping in mountains again just yet.