Saturday - Day 11 - 6 May 2023

We left our motel twice this morning - once to get some photos of the Silo Art, and then to get a coffee before we left Sea Lake; the second to return to motel key. Thank goodness I found it in my pocket before we left Sea Lake - I don't think I would have wanted to retrace our steps from our next stop - Swan Hill. 

We are not sure about Swan Hill - we could see no hill and we saw no swans - so we're thinking they could rename it Swanless Flats. Of course, the swans may have migrated to England to be with their official owner - newly-crowned King Charles who apparently owns all swans that aren't tagged (ie wearing a leg ring). We watched the Coronation from our motel room in Narrandera - well, Sooz did, I went outside a couple of times to see the almost full moon.

The drive down from Sea Lake was almost 6 hours by the time we stopped along the way for refreshments, pit stops, sightseeing and photographs. You never know what you're going to see along the way. Who knew there was a painted water tank (well two) at Hay? We only found it while we were looking for something to eat which wasn't Service Station Food.

And who knew there was something called the Altina Wildlife Park (at Darlington Point, near Narrandera) which has native and exotic animals - and which you can tour in a horse-drawn cart I want to say it's where the deer and the antelope play, and they do, but there is so much more there including rhinos, lions and giraffes. We may need to pass this way again! We noticed it because of the large giraffe statues at their front gate - which, alas, was closed! They weren't the first giraffes we had seen today - there was one, we call it Pebbles, across the road from the painted silos at Sea Lake.  Click here to see pics of the Silos and other sights from today. 

And while we liked Pebbles, I was even happier with the Giant Murray Cod at Swanless Flats. It is a whopper! It also meant that we were about to cross the border into NSW. We have loved Victoria (I am a great fan of their roads which leave some of the pot-hole holders we travelled on last April for dead! )

I heard back from Liz at the motel in Horsham - I had done a review of their new wireless chargers (actually a Bauhn not a Bauer) - and she thanked me and said she hoped we found one - which we did at Aldi in Swanless Flats. The challenge is whether we leave it in its box until we get home - or start using it along the way! The latter me thinks.

 
We stayed up later than usual waiting for the flypast for the Coronation - 68 aircraft from different vintages which had been carefully choreographed and scheduled for the flypast, mustering over the North Sea - that was the plan anyway, but wet weather put an end to that so, for safety reasons, there were helicopters and the Red Arrows trailing their red, white and blue smoke. Spectacular!