Oh My God! That was a cold night. I think the coldest I’ve been in the swag. I wasn’t expecting it to be that bad, but normally when it’s swagging in winter, I’m within a few metres of a camp fire. So it wasn’t a good nights sleep. The rooster at 4.00 wasn’t much help. I got up not long after 6 and put warm clothes on.

I had a hot drink to get something warm in me, some cereal (which cooled me back down), and then a proper camp breakfast to follow – bacon and eggs. We had a chill morning, another cuppa, fluffed around with a few things, and waited for the ice on my swag to melt, and then for the water to dry. We hit the road a bit after 9.00 and made our way to Canberra.

Our first destination was the Jaycar. We had a bluetooth speaker yesterday for music, but the charger lead broke, so we could no longer use it. Jaycar had a $25 reduced to $10, so we got that. It was quite a maze of streets to get in there, especially with the caravan. No parking so I got out while Pete did a lap of the block.

We then continued to the National Museum of Australia, for the Mr Squiggle exhibition. Paul and Lyn had told me about this, so we added it to the itinerary. It was well worth the visit. There were some caravan parking spots which were great, as we were worried about that. We got to see some classic Mr Squiggle history. We then went to the cafe for a light lunch, before making tracks.

Our next destination was Bent Spoke brewery – because no trip to Canberra would be complete without it. I had previously heard that the Cluster-8 was recently available (August 28th) so figured they would have stock. I wasn’t filled with confidence – the guy wasn’t too sure, but he manged to find some out the back. I had a Cluster-12 and Pete had a Hazee, while we looked at the map to plan our next nights accommodation. I couldn’t find anywhere further up the road than Berrima, so I called and booked our site at the Rec Reserve.

We had a quick look for a supermarket but no such luck, so got in the car, put on “We Gotta Get Out Of This Place”, and made our way out of Canberra. Not far up the road we stopped at the scenic lookout at Lake George and used the facilities. We assessed a few places for Diesel, but the cheapest was probably about 10km too far. Since we didn’t want to risk it, we had to pay an extra 8c/litre, and filled up at the cheapest servo in Goulburn – which luckily was also close to the highway, so we didn’t have to go in to town.

Then it was back on the highway, to get to Berrima. We were still about 40km out at 4.00, so were running late for beer-o’clock. But we were taking it easy. We drove through town looking for somewhere to buy some salad. We found the general store but that closed at 4, so no luck there. Oh well – we made our way to the Berrima Rec Reserve and found our camping spot. It wasn’t very level, but we used a chock under one of the wheels of the van, and I found an area for my swag.

Once set up I went for a walk down to the river and had a look. On a summer’s day it would be a lovely spot for a swim.

We had steak, bacon and scrambled eggs for dinner, cooked on the gas stove outside. A great dinner for the night. We cleaned up, and both got some work done. The night was clear – not a cloud in site.

I took an extra blanket in to my swag which Pete had under the bed, and also had a thermal top from my bag – I wasn’t going to be cold again tonight! We had a look at the map to work out our target destination for tomorrow, and had an early night.