Nimmons Bridge

I'd seen photos of Nimmons Bridge and really wanted to see it for myself, so scheduled a picnic stop on my pre-birthday itinerary. I'm good, eh?!

Nimmons Bridge is a very impressive hand-built wooden trestle bridge, built in the 1850s for the rail service during the gold rush.

It is one of the largest bridges of it's kind in Victoria and remains in use as part of the Ballarat-Skipton rail trail, a 53 kilometre cycleway.

Fortunately we didn't have to exert ourselves too much to view the bridge - and there was a picnic table very close to it.

We stopped for lunch - and were greeted warmly by a three-legged dog that lived in one of the nearby houses!

After lunch we strolled across the bridge and then walked along the bottom track to admire the structure from below.  Wow!

Devil's Kitchen

I'd read about Devil's Kitchen a while ago and decided to put it on the itinerary for my birthday prelude picnic outing.

The information I read was on a rock-climbing site, so most of the notes were concerned with climbing - whereas we just wanted to see the rocks.

Well, most of us were happy to view the formations from ground level.  As usual, Vaughan was keen to scale higher!

No-one else was climbing when we visited. There were a couple of other small groups wandering about.  Some were walking their dogs and others were collecting rocks.

There are no facilities at the kitchen, so we headed further along to seek a loo and picnic spot.

Snow-break ...

Given the snow and cold, we were pleased to pack up for eight weeks - and spend much of the colder months house-sitting.

Soon after we moved to the house there was more snow and we enjoyed watching it, while comfortably warm inside solid walls (and basking beside the wood-fire)!

Nick and Vaughan were snowed on while walking Bandit one very cold afternoon.  (They were not impressed)!

Snow!

We were very pleased of Nick's repair work and our added insulation efforts when it SNOWED!  Wow!

Typically Vaughan debated the snow forecast with me when I collected him from school.

He was quite adamant we wouldn't get any snow.  I listened to him while watching rain fall on the windscreen of the car.  The rain looked odd - because it was actually ice! (Nick was sleeping in preparation for night-shift, so missed seeing that first round of slushy stuff).

It was around 6:00am when Nick arrived home this morning.  He said it had been snowing on the freeway while he was driving and there was snow on the tent.  The rest of us huddled down in our blankets and asked him to show us a photo!  There was still snow on the ground when Vaughan and I got up later and we were very gleeful on the way to school, seeing cars drive past with snow mounded on bonnets and roofs!

I roused Erin a bit later to come out for some snow appreciation - and it snowed again while I was taking photos.  Of course, as interesting as it was to see snow, we were less impressed to be trekking back and forth to the amenities block in the cold!

Bragging Rights!

Much rain and local flooding in early July saw us taking advantage of a rare sunny day to head into our local forest.

We took provisions for lunch, afternoon tea and dinner - so were well prepared for a day of fun.

The creek was full, which hampered Vaughan's critter catching but our new toasting fork was thoroughly tested and Bandit shared some special Sausage King fare.

I made my best-ever damper - so need to brag about that.

Well, on searching the archives, it seems there was another rather fine example in 2011. However, there have been slightly charred offerings in between, most recently at Firth Park, so some fanfare is justified!

We stayed late so as to feast on camp oven roast dinner, toast giant Aldi marshmallows and then admire three packets of Mystic Fire (when all the cooking was done).

Back in March we first tried one pack of Mystical Fire.  It was pretty but the effect is definitely more impressive with three packets!

We finished the night with a sparkler finale.  Better than staying home!

C-O-L-D Comfort!

Nick worked in stages to repair the back of the van.  The first step was to remove everything stored beneath our Princess bed and shift it to the back room of the tent.

There was a definite draught coming in from the back of the van.  I was very aware of it when doing my nightly back stretches.  To combat the cold I hung a blanket across the bed frame, tucked in along the mattress.  

(You can see how cold it is some nights, there is a photo at right showing my tent kitchen looking like a steam room from the cooking)!

We made several trips to Bunnings to acquire a pop rivet gun, rivets, a length of aluminium and a strong drill bit.

There was very heavy frost earlier this week.  Nick had checked the tent thermometer at around 5:00am and the reading was -6 degrees!  It was 2 degrees a couple of hours later when we roused ourselves for the day.  There was ice on the tent and frost everywhere. Bandit's water bowl had iced over - the world was definitely C-O-L-D!

When the ground thawed, Nick worked on the caravan.  He riveted the metal cladding and also replaced the edging band.  The next day he installed three aluminium brackets to further anchor the cladding in place.

Nick had taken out the back interior wall lining while working on the repair.  It seemed a good opportunity to fit some insulation, so we went back to Bunnings to see what might work. Sheets of black corflute (thinner and far more flexible than the white variety we'd used for the window insulation) were on sale for $7.00 a sheet.  We bought two.  They were cut to size and sandwiched around layers of leftover bubble wrap (which had been used to successfully cut the cold coming off the van door).  The interior wall lining was replaced over our DIY insulation sheet. The van is much cosier now the repair is done and insulation added - hooray!

During our Ballarat trip a hook for the door blind came loose. It has now been replaced but for a week or so, the door was without it's blind - and we really noticed the difference. However I was heartened by the fact that we'd all coped with the -6 overnight temp with the draught from the back end and the missing door window blind. It gives me hope for our comfort as winter advances!

Lucky?!

The weekend after shifting sites, we had a couple of nights away - for a change of scene!  We left the tent set-up and took the van with us.

Nick had been on night-shift, so we travelled on Saturday afternoon to a caravan park not all that far from our usual one.

We stayed two nights and then came home on Monday morning.  I drove back first, delivering Vaughan to school just before 9:00am.  When I arrived back at the tent, I was impressed to see how well it had fared during the strong winds of the weekend.  (A large tree had broken off just beside Elmer Fudd at our temporary site and the weather had been similarly wild in the larger region).

Nick and Erin returned around mid-morning.  As they drove in, it was obvious the back of the van wasn't right.  The cladding had pulled away along the bottom edge.

Once the van was parked beside the tent, Nick inspected the rear-end damage and starting thinking about it's repair.  There was a definite gap between the exterior panel and the floor.  Fortunately it didn't seem that anything had fallen out during the 30km drive.  Lucky!