We made a spur of the moment decision to get the motorhome out of its shed and go somewhere. I’d read on Facebook about the Spirit of the Land Festival in Lockhart, which is only 155km from our home town, and thought it sounded like fun. The motorhome had been sitting in its shed for a while and needed a good clean before we could go anywhere. Our poor motorhome was covered in dust and had spiderwebs growing!

After spending a whole day washing and cleaning (I even washed the roof!) she was spick and span and ready for travel. A quick pack of some clothes and food and we were heading off. Oh, what a great feeling that is….driving out the gate, perched up high, and everything we needed travelling with us.

I’d had a phone call the day before we left from Richard’s cousins and our intrepid travel companions on many previous trips in Australia and overseas. They were planning to come to Griffith on their way south to Victoria and spend the night at our place. After I explained that we wouldn’t be there as we were going to Lockhart it was decided they’d travel there too and meet us there. Excellent!

We set off on Saturday morning after the four grandchildren, who’d had a sleepover at our house, had been collected by their parents. They all wanted to come with us!

We had an uneventful journey to Lockhart via Darlington Point and arrived around lunchtime. The Main Street was blocked off for the festival, the park looked busy with lots of stalls and a good crowd of people.

Minor Disaster!

As we were driving into town I heard a clunk. As first I though something had fallen on the floor but had a quick look behind me and couldn’t see anything. I put the noise down to a pothole in the road. We drove through town to the Showground where we planned to stay the night and where Catie and Robert would meet up with us.

We quickly found a spot to camp with plenty of room for Catie and Robert’s rig with their Ranger and caravan and started to set up camp. This was when I noticed something odd. On the drivers side, just in front of where the gas bottles are stored, is one of our two water tanks. It was hanging down almost touching the ground. Oh no! That didnt look good!

We investigated further and found the bolts holding one side of the tank to our chassis had let go and the full water tank was only hanging on on one side. There was 90kg of water in there!

What to do? We spent the next few hours emptying the tank and jacking it back up so we could somehow tie it back up temporarily. This meant we had no water as our two tanks are connected and to drain one drained the other. Good thing the showground had toilets and showers.

Catie and Robert arrived around 4 o’clock and we borrowed a ratchet strap from Robert’s stash to tie the tank back to the chassis. Richard and Robert achieved this crawling underneath in that small space. That would get us home where we could get it repaired.

The four of us walked into town as the sun was setting and headed to Hodgson Park on the western side of Brooking Lagoon, where there were food vans and tables and chairs set up for visitors. The fireworks display was to be held there later once it was dark.

We found a table and moved it to a position that we thought would be good so we could watch the fireworks from there and settled in to enjoy the festival atmosphere. We’d brought our own wine with us so just need to buy some food. It was lovely sitting in the park and catching up with Catie and Robert again.

The fireworks went off after dark and they went for around 15 minutes. We were impressed at the awesome display especially for a small town festival. When they were over the four of us walked back to camp at the showground and headed off to bed.

The next morning, after a quick breakfast and packing up camp, we drove into town, parked our vehicles and walked to the Main Street to check out all the stalls. What a great variety of stalls there were. Very impressive.

We visited the towns painted water tower and admired the amazing sculputures around the town. We also visited the Town Hall to check out the entries in the art and photography competitions. Some truly incredible paintings and photos. Some people are just so clever.

The $10 entry also enabled us to enter the area near the park that was fenced off and housed the sculpture competition. These amazing sculptures blow me away. The big ones must take hours and hours of work to complete. They really are fantastic creations.

The winner of this year’s competition was a statue of a large bull. He was made from scraps around the farm and included such things as spanners, spark plugs, screwdrivers, old discs and chains. It was a worthy entry for first prize.

I especially liked seeing the ones created by kids under 12. Fantastic effort by the kids creating sculptures.

We decided we’d better head for home as it would be slow going with our broken water tank so we said goodbye to Catie and Robert who were going to stay on for a bit and visit the Art Gallery. We might catch up again after they’ve been south and are on their way home to Dubbo in a few weeks time.

Fortunately our trip home was uneventful. We pulled up at Brewery Flat in Narrandera for some lunch. Rich checked the strap was holding and it hadn’t moved at all so we were good to continue.

We arrived home in the afternoon with no further adventures and the next morning booked the motorhome in to have the water tank repaired. $165 later and it was all fixed and ready to go on our next meander.