Day 9: Wentworth – big hiccup #2

Today was going along swimmingly. We left Silverton and Broken Hill (sniff!) after a fab few days. We arrived at Wentworth, at Thegoa Lagoon campground, at first purely on a recon mission, trying to determine where we’d park Sherwood for the night. Nice spot at the confluence of the Murray and Darling rivers.

Note: I am the driver today. I drove down close to the river, then turning back, we had to go over a bit of sand. Turns out, driving on sand is NOT AT ALL like driving on Minnesota snow. Lesson learned the hard way. We got bogged. Soooo stuck! And it happened in about 20 seconds. I could not believe it. I was convinced (!) I could get us out. Adam … not as convinced.  

Adam let the tires down to try to get us more traction (at least I think that’s why). Then he tried to move the van again – made it worse. Luckily, some very helpful other campers had taken up residence near us, and they came over to pity … I mean … help us. Meanwhile, shovelling sand around the tires is, in fact, A LOT like shovelling Minnesota snow, so I busied myself with that. Thankfully, one guy had a brand-new winch on his truck — insert Tim-the-Toolman-Taylor grunt here — that he was keen to try out. Boys and their toys. And it worked! I thought I was in for a very long, guilt-laden night of more digging, but the catastrophe was averted in less than 20 minutes.

The night quickly turned around. Adam handed me wine (that’s no dope, my husband). Then we reflected on a day/night of firsts: our first bog (and we’d survived, and, more importantly, so had trusty Sherwood, the campervan). We built our first campfire. We cooked our first outdoor omelet.