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Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Visiting Echuca




We'd heard many good stories about Echuca, three hours north of Melbourne on the Murray River. It seemed the perfect first stop on our caravan adventures and a great place to break in The Whale. In low season we had our choice of caravan parks, but in the summer the parks and free camps apparently burst at the seams. We checked with WikiCamps, our go-to camping resource for Australia, and decided to make camp at Moama Waters – a few minutes northeast of town. The reviews and comments were spot on, this new campground is a gem. In June when the evening temperature dips right around 0C, there are only a handful of caravans in the park. We had 18 free spaces around us making our first time parking a caravan about as easy as it gets. Our only neighbours were a friendly mob of galahs destroying the local grass.

Echuca is probably best know for its paddlesteamers on the river, but I'm a bit of an old car junkie and we decided to instead visit the National Holden Museum. For the readers outside of Australia, Holdens are thee Australian car. If we were to change our flag, a Holden would rightly be on the design alongside a meat pie and jar of Vegemite.  (Side note: There's a great TED talk on flag design that I recommend for pretty much everyone.)




I liked the sleek curves, vintage tones and hood ornaments. Craig's pick of the museum was a bright green Torana like the one his dad owned in the mid-seventies.


Echuca was an ideal base camp. In town we had our pick of department stores, camping shops and Bunnings. We found everything we needed from hose adaptors to spatulas. Moama Bowling Club put on a good meal when we weren't breaking in the new kitchen and the vintage store on High Street has good coffee along with its well-curated retro eye candy. Quite honestly, nothing about Echuca let us down.

Life in the Whale is good.

This is part 2 of our Murray Valley caravan adventure. In part 3 we go to Murray Valley National Park

2 comments:

  1. Glad to hear my current home town didnt let you down!! Although I've never heard of the Holden museum - off now to look it up.

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  2. interesting blog and nice close up shots of the cars. I have never heard of Echuca before but it sounds like a nice place which is worth visiting. Hope you have many more camping adventures! I would like to read more about where you have been in the whale. You have inspired me to plan a trip of my own.

    Andrea Wilkins @ Getaway Outdoors

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You are a rockstar! Thanks so much for your comments!