Murray-Kulkyne Regional Park - Heathcote

We left Mildura which to me was just another large town with all the things large towns offer, to be fair we can recommend the Sandbar Hotel for a good counter meal in huge portions,


Murray-Kulkyne Regional Park #395 in the camps 3 Aust wide book was our 1st night after leaving Mildura, we stumbled upon this Park as we were initially on the Calder Highway when we exected to be further North travelling along the Murray, once we realised this we cut across to Coligman and came across the Kulkyne Park, the park is seperated from the adjoining Hattah Kulkyne National Park by a dirt road with the river on the Kulkyne Park side. The National Park has two gazetted camping area's with fee's to apply whereas the Park had very few restrictions and no fee's, plus being along side the river it was a no brainer as to which we enjoyed.



Amazing along all these roads and camping sites we came across very few other campers, one spot we did meet some other caravanners was at Passage Bend # 344, this was a 5klm windy track in coming out at a nice camp area right on a bend in the river, hence the name. Murray & Jenny with a Kedron XC were already setting up camp amongst the tree's and a Mother & daughter travelling in a car & box trailer with all their possessions had a well set up camp with tents on a cleared area on the river's banks, fortunately for us they were leaving so we were able to take over their spot and lay claim to the firewood they had left. Gordon & Wendy from Qld towing a 25' Jayco arrived soon after so that made up our happy hour crew for that night.


We stayed two nights at Passage Bend and it was a lovely spot with lots of Sulphur Crested Cockatoo's performing their tumbling acts for us each afternoon as they came home to roost in the tree's around us. Everyone had the same idea as us and left after two days but we were last to break camp and head out onto the Murray Valley Highway with our next nights camp just a hop skip & jump along at Nyah State Forest [#339] again we were by ourselves for the night . The full moon had been & gone and it was surprisingly very black outside with the stars shining brightly, helped only by the flickering flames of our camp fire, what a great LIFE !



A drive into Swan Hill ..... another large town, a quick look around and on we drove towards Kerang where we fueled up and drove to Cohuna, here was another pleasent surprise for us, we saw a mud map at the closed Information Bay showing plenty of free camping areas along the river, a quick check with the local camping store and we had infomation along with a map of the area, where we were heading was Gunbower Island, simple to get to we just crossed over the creek and followed the dirt tracks down to the river and took our choice of the many lovely camp sites, without the map though we would have still been looking. No shortage of firewood again and we had another wonderful evening by the fire this time playing Skip Bo and i copped another beating so that meant i was on morning coffee duty again.


We are now at Heathcote Caravan Park, it wasn't our intention but again we missed the road we were supposed to be on and it wasn't worth turning around, besides Heathcote has some memories for me, i recall coming here with my Mum and camping in a tent in the same park we are now in 43 years later, funny how life works sometimes.