Arrived in Cowra late afternoon and made a bee-line for the famous Japanese gardens. The other thing Cowra is famous for is the attempted mass break out of Japanese from a POW camp in 1944.

The gardens were well worth the stop. $15.00 adult admission, dogs free (and it was nice to see a dog friendly tourist attraction).

All up we spent about an hour wandering around the lush gardens. It so reminded us of our trip to Japan back in 2010, and so we made a commitment to go back and visit again ASAP.

We found a nice spot to free camp for the night and nudged Ripley up against some local parkland that had the added bonus of being close to public toilets and a short walk to McDonalds for emergency coffee if needed. Which, turns out it was.

As the sun sank we took Juno for a walk out across the a low crossing just below the Cowra bridge. The path abutted the local caravan park where caravans and camper vans were all squished-in Tetris style.

In contrast we had a nice quiet open spot (eventually shared with two other travellers) looking out across a park and some well curated sports fields.

The flood.

For dinner Kelly made toasted hommus, cheese, tomato, avocado, mushroom and chilli-sauce wraps.

If you have never toasted a wrap (we just pressed it into a hot frypan) it exponentially improves the experience.

Thanks Kelly…..full yum.

By and by, it came time for me to wash up the dishes. And as I drained the full sink of dirty dishwater, there was this funny gurgling splodgulating sound.
I thought, thats strange.
The sink has never mad a sound like that before.

And then my socks suddenly felt wet.
I looked down to see dirty dishwater gushing out from beneath the gaps in the sink cabinet.

It was like a bad scene from the movie Titanic, and as the water gushed forth, Kelly and I made a mad acrobatic, yabbering,  full contact dash to grab towels and lifejackets, and anything that might remotely assist to soak up the flood.

Turns out that for whatever reason, perhaps the jiggly-bumpy road trip, perhaps our overpacking the under-sink cupboard….whatever…..the corrugated plastic tube that leads down from the sink and connects to the grey water tank had disconnected at floor level. This resulted in the entire contents of a full sink of dirty water being diverted out into the cupboard, and thence on to all the nooks and crannies that gravity demand it flow. Every single nook and cranny.

The next morning Ripley’s interior resembled the aftermath of a tornado in a laundromat, and smelled of copious wet nasty.

We cleaned up, the mess, hung out the towels to dry and re-set our spirits with hot coffee and breakfast.
It was a magnificent sunny morning. And with full bellies, all was good in the world. Onwards…..