Lupins at Kiandra
Tonight we are camped on the shore of Blowering Lake. Like all the big lakes in this part of Australia it is a man-made lake behind a dam. Completed in 1968, its role is to store the water released upstream by the Snowy Mountain Scheme of electrical dams, and store it for the needs of summer irrigation. One of its claims to fame is that it is where the world water speed record of 317 mph was set in 1978.
Yesterday we stayed at Three Mile Dam and didn’t do much. I wrote some. Enid read. We also played two games of SCRABBLE, and I lost them both. At least the second game was interesting and close.
We left this morning and stopped at the deserted town of Kiandra. There is a historical walking trail through the town, but only one or two standing buildings. There were a lot of lupin growing around the sites where old buildings had been. This town was the scene of a gold rush in the 1860’s and also the first place where downhill skiing was practiced in Australia (by Norwegian miners).
After that we drove to this campground and spent quite a while trying to find a good level site. Everything slopes down towards the water. We used our inclined ramps on both downhill wheels to make ourselves level.
It was very windy this afternoon, strong gusts rocking the motorhome. The wind howling sounds like a prairie blizzard, but it is quite warm outside. After supper there was a large thud on our roof as a branch must have blown down from a tree. We had planned to swim in the lake, but the water was very muddy, stirred up by the waves. Instead we had a shower in our motorhome. It’s so windy that it has blown out the heater in our refrigerator twice, so we hope that it will keep running overnight.