Camping on the Mighty Murray

When to go camping along the Murray River?    

For years we have had our traditional camping holiday over the Christmas break. We head up to Torrumbarry on the Murray River. It is a tradition that my wife’s family has done for around 30 years and even before that they lived up there. Often we would go up just before Christmas and get ‘our spot’. We’ve been lucky and had the same spot for every year for the last 11 years, bar one.

Camping is not a poor person’s holiday as it used to be described. Yes you can do it cheaply but over the years we have seen huge changes in peoples camping habits (even ours). Nowadays the size and expense of the boats has exploded. Our little Sleekline 1800 is now dwarfed by the huge Malibu’s and Wakesetters.  Once you get a few of these on the River it can get chaotic and our boat struggled.

Then there are the caravans, whilst ours is a modest little 1986 Roma van it’s not uncommon to see vans in excess of $80K, and of course you then need a vehicle capable of towing these toys!

This year we went up a little later than in the past. Most of the traffic up on the river is from Boxing Day until just after New Years. Whilst the in-laws headed up before new year we went just after and it was a lot quieter.

This proved to be a great move, there were times we had the river to ourselves and when you have kids trying to ski it is a relief to get empty water to help their confidence. Of course, on the last ski of the trip my wife fell, the ski hit her in the head and she spent a few hours in hospital getting her head glued up and staying under observation. In the end it was all good, although it took a few days to get back to normal.