We left Moorook to make our way into Victoria with fond memories of a very pleasant stay.
We stopped in Barmera to do the laundry and to buy a new, all-weather table as the old one had collapse under the strain of getting wet every time it rained hard.
We stopped in Renmark to fuel up and to refill the fresh water tanks with town water since the water in Moorook was OK to wash in but was very cloudy.
We investigated the Herbert Dix Memorial Park which is very pretty but which carries a NO everything sign.
We visited Lock 5 and I had a chat to the Lock Keeper about the state of the river. They are presently maintaining the minimum allocation of 7Gl/day into SA by releasing water from Lake Victoria downstream of Wentworth and from Dartmouth Reservoir in the Snowy Mountains. The minimum allocation will drop to 3Gl/day in the winter. There is a board which shows the flows and the past flood peaks are all shown. The great flood of 1956 reached 350Gl/day, 50 times the present flow and in 1983 and 1984 the flows reached about 60Gl/day.
The flood in the Darling in 1998 which we skirted was 105Gl/day but none of this every reached the Murray. The Lock Keeper suggested that this was because farmers all along the Darling used bull dozers to open the river banks to get water from the flood.
We headed east and reached the Border Rest Area in time for afternoon tea. This rest area is right on the highway and is very noisy so we drove back 5 km into South Australia to an unmarked rest area formed from the old highway which is a couple of hundred metres from the new highway. We did have a visit from a road train but he was only going very slowly so it was no drama. Our night was very peaceful.