Travel : Gundagai & Winchelsea
A long time in the making but we are finally setting off on our little adventure to Perth and Back. We’ve done plenty of travel before around Australia (normally just with our swags) but this time we wanted to explore a little further from home. This is no ‘big lap’, just short little 9 week trip from our home town of Newcastle to Perth via the Coast and then back inland via the Great Central Road.
Given that we only have 9 weeks we wanted to really ‘start’ this trip from the Great Ocean Road, so our 1st two days were basically just driving down the highway.
Gundagai
After 5 and a half hours in the car with plenty of rest stops for Boss (our 18 month old Lab) we finally made it to Gundagai.
As a side note there are some fantastic rest stops just outside of Sydney with fresh produce for sale.
Gundagai is a beaut little town with basically everything you could need, fuel, pubs, groceries and some great cafe’s.
Stay
There are two free camps in Gundagai that are donation camps along with 2 caravan parks that are all pup friendly. Given we were only stopping overnight we chose Morleys Creek Campground
We only had 3 other campers for the night and there was certainly plenty of room between each of us. This camp ground is a self sufficient people only. There are toilets across the road in the park, but no water. If you are lucky the cows will be grazing in the paddock next door when you wake up in the morning.
There is a brilliant off leash dog park just across the road from this campsite, which was great to throw a stick around for the dog both in the evening and morning.
The town
Given we only had the night and the morning we didn’t get to explore a lot of the town. We did get to have coffee at the Coffee Pedelar in the main st, highly recommend if you are in town. We walked the main st, took a stroll to the old bridge and then headed on our way.
Beau’s Update
Winchelsea
We originally set off from Gundagai headed to Torquay for the start of the Great Ocean Road. But if you are travelling with a dog you will find there aren’t a lot of places to camp or stay along this route.
We took at quick look in Torquay before heading back inland to Winchelsea for the night.
Stay
Again there are two options for free camps and a caravan park in Winchelsea that are all pup friendly. We chose the Barwon River Reserve for the night.
The sites are level and have trees scattered around for shade. There was certainly a lot of space and only 2 other campers the night we stayed. There is a toilet block 100m away but no other amenities. The river is directly behind the camp sites. You can walk across a little bridge to get into the main street.
The town
The main street is a few hundred metres away from the camp ground and has a pub, bakery, grocery store, pharmacy and takeaway. We had coffee from Cafe La Hoot which was very popular with the locals. Not as good as Gundagai though.
Beau got to set the standard with his 1st sausage roll of the trip at Kenty’s Bakery
If you are passing through or looking for somewhere to stay at the start or end of the Great Ocean Road I highly recommend Winchelsea.