ANZAC Long Weekend

As mentioned on the last post, we had decided that we wanted to start camping out more. Those of you who know me well can imagine that tents are not so much my scene - the ever-deflating airbed, the scrambling on knees on tentfloor at midnight to get PJ's on and contact lenses out; the 8am walk of shame through the caravan park with bedhead and puffy eyes to get to the loos - nuh-uh! So having seen a great little caravan at 90 Mile Beach we started investigating this option. We ended up settling on a Jayco Hawk - a camper whose bottom half resembles a caravan with all the mod-cons one might expect of a caravan, such as kitchen, including sink, oven & fridge, dining table and couches; with the top half made of canvas and beds popping out on either end. Result! The outdoorsy feeling of a tent with the conveniences & comfort of a caravan. And so compact and light that even the Rav4 can tow it.

This time Echuca, 3 hours from Melbourne was selected as our destination for the ANZAC long weekend. We went for the free camping option to really test the Hawk out. We all met up and camped directly on the banks of the Murray. Interesting fact - NSW was a mere 10 meters away on the other side of the river. Despite a serious amount of rain on Day 2, which turned our lovely site into somewhat of a mud-pit, Days 1, 3 and 4 were sunny and our stay was great! Echuca itself was a fantastic place, full of stuff to see and the local bakery was A+

Hawk performed most admirably, and it was awesome to be able to open up the windows to our bed each morning and get the fresh morning air and river views while still being under the doona. What a way to wake up - loved it!!

Again Greg B gets 10/10 for fire management, Giles gets 8/10 for keeping us all 'entertained' with screaming renditions of Old McDonald Had a Farm around the fire at night (thanks to our fellow campers for pretending it was still cute after the 20th blasting out of said tune), and both Simon & Greg deserve full marks for braving a Victorian autumnal day and swimming in the Murray!! Hurrah for the Murray - we'll be back!

Introducing... Mr Jayco Hawk!!

At Echuca - starting with the fantastic Beechworth Bakery:

The main drag...

We sampled some local ports... including a very nice muscato (a white version)

This shot was just begging to be set to Sepia, right?

Camping at 90 Mile Beach

90 Mile Beach is rated as one of Australia's top 10 beaches so we thought it was worth a look over the Easter long weekend. We hadnt been camping in a while (since the prior Easter actually) so we decided to join our friends Greg and Tania - big campers and who thankfully have all the necassary gear (just as well - we have just a tent and an airbed and some orange camping chairs, and I am not sure that we could survive a night on our own). Besides that, Greg makes the best super toasty campfire in all the land - perfect for copious red wine drinking at night, & he whips up fire-cooked hotpots for dinner. He is the man you want on your team when camping!

The park we stayed at - 90 Mile Beach Retreat - was lovely set directly behind the dunes, and we even had a friendly white horse next to us who was pretty happy to receive Giles' pats and came over frequently to gobble up our leftovers. The beach itself was great - wide and clean, plenty of surf, and lots of gorgeous shells. The weather held up for us and the weekend was such a success that we decided to make camping a more regular activity... see my next post for the outcome - when Howard-Everts Inc decide something, they decide it good & proper!
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I have about 100 photos of this horse - he was so beautiful
Simon catching up on his Financial Review.... yes, its what us finance-nerds read when we want to relax out with a paper on our long weekends. We had 3 days worth so Simon & I didnt fight over them.

F1 Weekend

The Melbourne Formula 1 Grand Prix - the highlight of the Howard boys' calendar! We played host to a large group of gentlemen from Perth for the tradition that is known as the 'F1 Weekend', consisting of: dinner in Chinatown; punt at the Crown; go-karting & a bbq; and a day or two at the races (I am only involved in a limited selection of these activities as you can imagine). Experian (the company I work for) hosted a BBQ on the office rooftop terrace which overlooks Albert Park - so we were also lucky to get a great vantage point from which to watch the F1 and the opening festivities. The noise of the cars was deafening even from up there, those cars are crazy loud! Here are a couple of shots ...