SAA - Day 8

Corella's at Thompson's Beach, Cobram

Cobram threw up a beautiful, sunny day for us.

As usual, Sue started slowly, being stiff and sore after a night sleeping but gradually got underway with exercises and walking.

With physio approved chairs in tow, we went down to the Murray River and set up camp and Thompson's Beach, a big slow bend in the river on the outskirts of Cobram. This is riverine technology at its best, with a tall, undercut bank on the outside of the bend and a sandy low bank on the inside of the bend. It's a favourite spot for locals and an interesting spot for visitors. The inside bank has a long sandy "beach" and huge river red gums. In the trees, corellas spend some of their time preening themselves and each other and some of their time in spectacular short bursts of flight, moving in swaying unison like one body.

We sat in the sunshine for two hours reading.

After a short spell back at the cabin for Sue to rest her back, we drove the short distance to Koonoomoo and the Big Strawberry for lunch and stories of the tornado which originated there in late March. Across the road is the remands of a shop which was the first victim of a tornado which touched down here first and apart from being blown to bits the shop was also hit by a caravan which was picked up 200 metres away and dumped on top of it. From here, it traversed down the Murray, ending in Mulwala where decimated the community.

Here in Koonoomoo, even large trees were missing their tops and almost all of their leaves.

We had a pleasant lunch, reviewing a book just purchased about fifty of the "big things" in Australia. The Big Strawberry, to be found on these pages, was just outside.

In the afternoon, we returned to Cobram to do some shopping but in the process offered a free consult to the lady in the tourist information office about back pain and potential treatments.

Our pleasant day ended with tea and some television.