Craigieburn Tourist Park

12 January 2006

Saying goodbye to the Crown Hotel. As Liz says, it's easy to get attached to this place - magnificent river views, awesome cheap food, very cheap beer, comfy beds, clean everything - and they make your bed and give you a clean towel and soap each day! All this for $20 each. Can't fault it. Liz and I have decided we need to develop our own budget travellers guide to Australia and put it on the website - watch out for it, as soon as we work out how to do it, it will be here.

Our crochet is interesting but looks great. yesterday i made 5 squares in the time Liz made 1. i get the impression this is going to be a very one-sided rug.

(Around 6pm-ish. wouldn't really have a clue. sense of time diminishing rapidly...)

At Craigieburn Tourist Park. Another must for the budget traveller. weve been wandering the grounds and there's beautiful boulders surrounded by fields of white daisies. i'm sitting on a boulder near a creek as i write. there has been thunder in the distance for about 4 hours now. i sincerely hope it's all bark and no bite given we're finally camping. the campsite itself is gorgeous - a ring of boulders and big shady trees. an unfortunate drawback is the carpet of dead christmas beetles. they're everywhere. i don't understand it. you practically can't put your foot down without stepping on one. i rolled up the door of my tent for half an hour earlier today, and when i would it down, there was a dead beetle in it.

the breeze is picking up now. a nice reprieve from gem fossicking in the sun, which is how we spent our afternoon. we got an awesome haul - lots of pretty things. we had so much fun we're going back tomorrow.

this morning we drove to Glen Innes, and got very excited about the signs saying "hanging rock" but it turned out to be just a property called hanging rock, not the real thing. we found a place on the map of Victoria that says hanging rock. does anyone know if that's the real one? Anyway, we're going to balancing rock tomorrow to fulfil tim's challenge, so we'll get to see some sort of rock at least.