Day one is really just a transit day, heading toward our destinations in South Australia.

We were out of bed by 7:00am aiming for a 9:00am departure, which we thought would give us a reasonable run via the Eastern Freeway. Our 9:05am departure was close enough, but the traffic on the Eastern was bad and just reminded us in part why we'd retired from work last year. 

But eventually we cleared the traffic and were looking for the sky to clear so we really felt like we were on holidays. The blue sky came, but as we approached Ballarat it was still chilly.

We took a quick detour off the Western Highway at Ballarat to visit Dad and show him our little van. The temperature rose as we continued on from Ballarat, not unexpectedly. 

Lunch was a ham roll, banana, coconut slice (home made) and a cup of tea prepared in the van at a roadside stop just past Ararat. We moved a little from our first position when we found the van was parked on top of a very active bull ant nest! It was a very pleasant outlook towards Mt Boswell in the Ararat Hills Regional Park.

It was then just a short run onto our first overnight stop at Horsham in the Wimmera Lakes Caravan Resort. It was pretty quiet in the park and we could select our own site - which we did, in the shade of a couple of small trees. 

Dinner will be salmon patties and salad which we brought with us from home. Not bothering to put the TV antenna up - tonight we will watch an NBL game we recorded from the weekend on DVD and have an early night ready for our onward journey to Murray Bridge tomorrow.