THURSDAY NOVEMBER 14     COROWA

I was up at 8am. John slept later.

Weather was still cool and grey.

Later in the morning, visited the chocolate factory in Corowa – recommended by the Information Centre man, yesterday. This was housed in an old flour mill. Good to see an old building being re-purposed, and in a way that didn’t try to hide its industrial past.

There were some displays mounted, showing the history of the building and its use. There was also a cafe set up, so we had an early lunch – a ham and cheese croissant at a very reasonable $4.50. Also had coffee, served with chocolate coated liquorice on the side. John was hooked, at that point! We couldn’t leave the old mill without visiting the shop section.

We bought heaps – about $100 worth! John did a lot of tasting! My choices were raspberry chocolate coated liquorice and choc coated coffee beans. John bought choc coated liquorice, ditto macadamia nuts, ditto cranberries, and some rocky road. We bought a box of choc coated macadamias to take to the Canberra family, the same for friend M, and big Freckles lollies for the Canberra boys. We gained two free calico bags for all the goodies too. That was an excellent bit of sightseeing!

Drove back to the Victorian side again. So much easier to do, these days, compared to older times – or even back in the 1960’s that I could remember. Before Federation of the colonies in 1901, there were customs posts set up at crossings between NSW and Victoria, with duties payable on goods crossing between the two. Then later, there was another kind of check – travellers were stopped and queried/inspected for fruit fly – in an attempt to prevent it reaching Victoria. Those I could remember. Few people know that the border was also closed in 1919, to try to slow the spread of the Spanish Flu epidemic.

Now, we just trundled across any bridge we chose, with no impediment.

Today, the Pickled Sisters establishment was open for business. More tasting for John. We bought bottles of each of their three types of olives, a jar of tapenade, a bottle of lovely nutty olive oil, and my choice of a jar of pickled eggplant.

Visited Chambers Rosewood Winery again, and I bought some bottles of wine, in case we needed same for socializing on the rest of the trip – half a dozen bottles of Riesling, and one of their late harvest Riesling.

Back to camp for a lazy rest of the day – but via Woolworths, as John wanted hamburgers for tea. I bought foccacia rolls from a bakery and they were an excellent substitute for the usual hamburger buns.

We did both manage to coax Couey into a pleasant walk along the Murray bank, for some way. If both of us were there, presumably, that dragonfly wouldn’t dare to attack her again…