24th, 25th, 26th, January Franklin River Rest Area

After leaving Port Albert we arrived to a pleasant surprise when we stopped at the free camp beside the road and the Franklin River.
It was a huge grassy area with lots of different types of trees, although there was already several dozen campers and caravans no one was on top of each other and there was room for dozens more, there wasn't any drinking water we had enough and the nearest town was only 4kms away, it was possible to get water for washing out of the river if it was needed, there was also good clean stainless steel flushing toilets.
We stayed 3 nights as it was the long weekend and it was a bit hard to get into most places besides this was free and very nice.
When we setup we went into Foster which was 11kms away, we needed a few necessary groceries,  and a bottle of whisky. We walked around the little town which had 2 bakeries but we never bought anything, we went into the information centre to get as much information as possible of the area. On the way back we saw a dead wombat on the side of the road, Merv had never seen one so I was hoping to see one in the paddock, one of the locals said if we went up the road after dark we would see one but we hadn't taken the camper off so we couldn't be bothered. We then went along to Toora which was 4km the other direction, this is a tiny town almost looks like a ghost town but it does have plenty of services, there is a big factory in town it made me curious if it still operated and what it was, does it give employment to the locals, I was talking to a local who told me it wad a milk processing plant that was bought by the Chinese which they make baby formula in, they hire approx 6 locals bring in the rest on 457 visas and buy the powered milk from New Zealand, they just package and add vitamins at the plant, all this and our government is always giving them money,  they have just been given another 1 1/2 million dollars, go figure. We did check the boat ramp which was good but we didn't intend going out.
25th, 2nd day we woke to rain, wind and freezing cold so we stayed in bed and read all day, I only got up when I had to and to make food and drinks.
26th,  Australia day the rain has stopped but it is still pretty cold but we still decide to head to some of the national park areas, the first one was Agnus waterfall, a small waterfall but quite pretty, next Tarra national park, this was very green and lovely, the one thing about being cool with frequent rain is everything is green with gorgeous plants and trees. The road going up was windy and narrow but worth it, we stopped at one of the picnic areas and made a coffee and lunch then went for a walk. On the way back we stopped into Port Welshpool there were quite a lot of people fishing on the jetty with a couple of nice flathead caught. We lit the fire pot at night, it was a very quiet night.