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Monday
morning Betty and I packed up our gear and prepared the Putt Putt
to travel from Wentworth up the Murray to Mildura with a flotilla
of boats heading up stream on the continuation of the Heritage
Boat voyage going to Echuca.
We
congregated at 11 a.m. at the Wentworth lock with about seven big
paddle steamers three house boats and three other Putt Putt boats
like ours.
We
all headed up stream towards Merbein travelling the 56 river
Kilometres to Mildura.
The
Curlwaa bridge was organised to be lifted at midday, on arriving
we were ahead of the others so we pulled in to the bank to wait to
watch as they all got ready to go through and have a walk around
to stretch our legs.
This
was where our first mishap occurred Betty was getting back into
the boat when she overbalanced and fell into the boat backwards
lodging between the motor and the front seat. It caused quite an
emotion as we had stopped with the other two Putt Putt boats and
one of them had a video running all the time.
Betty
escaped with a nice big bruise which they did not see on the
video.
When
all the other boats arrived the bridge was lifted and we all went
through getting some great photos. We travelled on past Merbein
and twisted our way to Mildura.
Just
past Merbein we had another hiccup the dreaded bolt in our main
drive shaft decided to come undone and flew out leaving us with no
drive.
After
pulling up the floorboards I found the missing parts and put them
back together, it is amazing what you can do with a pair of
multigrips a leather man and two screwdrivers.
It
took us an hour to overtake the others then we were able to keep
comfortably in front where it is a nice feeling to be at times.
It
was great to travel this piece of river, we seem to have driven
past at 100 k.m. per hour over the years and never really seen it
as it is.
One
road kilometre is equal to three river Murray kilometres
We
arrived at 5 p.m. at Mildura, only to find that no one had made
arrangements to pass through the lock and it was out of normal
operating hours.
Our
road crew had arrived with the trailer but there was no loading
ramp on the bottom side of the lock so we had to make a quick
decision because it was getting dark.
We
decided that we and the other two Putt Putts would travel back
down stream to a big bend where we saw a ramp on the way up and
the ground crew would meet us there.
We
loaded as many kids and ground crew as we could for the trip down
steam and headed off arriving just at dark, we loaded the boats
onto the trailers with the car lights before farewelling the
others and heading back to Wentworth for a good sleep.
See & Order
photographs from the Wooden Boat Festivals
Box 12
Gumeracha 5233
Amber@chariot.net.au
http://www.cobweb.com.au/~amber/index.html
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