Day 1 - Scarborough - Wadeville, NSW 01 February, 2023
This trip was primarily about visiting many places in northern NSW that we would normally drive past on the way to other places.
We also worked the timing of this adventure around the need to be in Gunnedah by February 22nd, to help Meg’s mum with her move into her retirement village apartment.
Our first day on the road we were aiming to cross the QLD/NSW border on the border ranges road, then follow the Lion’s Road on the NSW side of the border, doing any interesting sightseeing on the way, and hoping to end up around Wadeville for the night.
We got away from home about 9:00 A.M. and drove down the Gateway, onto the Logan Motorway, then onto the Mt Lindsey Highway, bypassed Beaudesert, then turned off onto Innisplain road, which eventually took us onto the Lions Road. As the name suggests, Lions Road was built with the help of the Lions organisation.
We crossed the border at Richmond Gap then continued along the Lions Road to the Border Loop rest area, where we stopped for lunch, to read the information boards, and to enjoy the view of the surrounding area from the viewing platform.
Back on the road we continued heading south east on the narrow, winding road to The Brindle Creek picnic area, where we stopped to do the 750 metre Red Cedar Loop walk through the stunning bush. The walk was easy, though on a very narrow at times track that had made a minimal impact on the surrounding environment, and everything was wet, the trees, bushes and ground even though it wasn’t raining.
Driving along Lions Road, and walking through the bush we saw Wompoo Pigeons, Crimson Rosellas, small wrens, wallabies, kangaroos, and even an angry-yabby type creature on the Red Cedar Loop track that turned to face us with pincers raised when we encroached on its territory.
Next stop a little way along the road was the Pinnacle Lookout, a short 200 metre walk, that provided an absolutely stunning view of the Tweed Caldera and surrounding area, an ancient volcano that was 1000 metres high at that point, and 40 KM across. The view across to Mt Warning, with its peak covered in cloud, was one of the most impressive I’ve seen in my 40 years of travelling the globe.
Our last sightseeing stop for the day was at the Blackbutt Lookout, which was just as impressive as The Pinnacle Lookout, once again looking across the Tweed Caldera.
With all the touristing done for the day, it was a short drive to the Wadeville Woolies Campground, our camping spot for the night. The camp was reasonably quiet, with nice grassy unpowered camping areas and supplied fire pits, much to my delight! The surrounding countryside was very picturesque, verdant, treed, rolling hills of farmland.
We setup for the night and chilled after our first day back on the road for around 3 months.
Once the sun went down we cranked up the fire, had dinner and enjoyed sitting outside looking at the stars.
Day 2 - Wadeville - Broken Head, NSW 02 February, 2023
After a leisurely start to the day we left Wadeville Woolies around 9:30 A.M. and continued our journey to the south east, aiming generally for the coast around Byron Bay.
First stop though was a side trip to Cutters Camp campground where there was a bush walk we wanted to do that would take us past some giant fig trees. The roads were narrow and winding, and not in very good condition in many places. Once into the Mebbin National Park, the speed limit reduced to 40 km/h for about 11 kms until we reached the carpark.
We were disappointed to learn when we got there that the walk we wanted to do was partly closed because of landslides, so we had to do a shorter 1.5 km version partly through dense bush, then out onto the road to climb back up to the carpark.
We then decided to just head for coast, and carried on to Brunswick Heads for a look at the beach and a lunch stop.
After a quick peek at the beach we went to the Brunswick Heads Hotel for a lunch of fish and chips, which was ok but a bit too much on the quantity and a little bit less on the quality.
Carrying on down the coast, our next stop was the Byron Bay Lighthouse, which was established in 1901.
The views of the surrounding area, north to Tweed Heads and south to Lennox Head were amazing.
Still not sure about where we'd stay for the night we decided to check out Broken Head campground because we wanted to have a swim at one of these amazing beaches that we were travelling past.
The campground had an unpowered site free so we parked up, set up for the night then wandered the few metres over to the beach for a swim.
What a rude shock we got as soon as the water touched our feet - it was so cold! It felt about 5 degrees cooler than our beach at home. We persevered for a while trying to get in deeper but eventually gave up and went back to our campsite.
The rest of the day was spent catching up with socials and blogs etc., and enjoying sitting outside with the sea breezes tempering slightly the high temperature and humidity.
Day 3 - Broken Head - Braemar Park Free Camp, NSW 03 February, 2023
After another leisurely start to the day we broke camp around 9:30 A.M., headed initially for the Lennox Head Lookout, a short drive away travelling south along the coast.
At the lookout there were a few hang gliding people getting ready to jump off the cliff, and we had to navigate around them to get to the walkway up to the top of the lookout. After a steep climb up dozens of wooden steps we reached the top, then walked another 200 or so metres to the actual lookout that provided spectacular, uninterrupted views to the east and south. The wire fencing around the edge of the cliff was covered in padlocks, put there by people as a show of love I believe. Many of the padlocks were engraved with the names or initials of young, and maybe not so young, lovers.
Continuing our journey south we drove through Ballina, slowing down only briefly to take a pic of The Big Prawn, then headed east through Alstonville to Lismore, where we wanted to visit a Koala Care Centre that is run by volunteers and looks after Koalas that have been hit by cars. Unfortunately, the tour around the facility we were hoping to do didn’t run on Fridays, so we missed out and drove up to a lookout where the Koala Care Centre information suggested we might see some Koalas. Alas, it was as I’d feared, this was another attempt by delusional people trying to make us believe that Koalas are something more than a mythical creature!
Disappointed once again, we continued our drive to Casino. We had a few jobs to do in Casino that included filling up with diesel (97 litres @ $2.18 per litre – ouch!), grabbing some supplies from Woolies and BWS, and filling up with fresh water. By then it was lunchtime and we drove around in circles for some time trying to find a shady spot to park up in, in the 36°C temperatures. Meg eventually found a good place at the local showgrounds under some shady gum trees where the heat wasn’t too unbearable while we ate our lunch.
During lunch we decided we’d call it a day and just drive to a camping spot for the night, which turned out to be Braemar Park free camp, about 25 km south of Casino. The campsite was a bit rough, with long grass that hadn’t seen a mower for some time, and a very basic toilet block. Initially, we also had issues getting any mobile/internet access, but occasionally the internet gods smiled upon us and delivered a few skerricks of interweb tokens.
Apart from the 36°C heat, lack of breeze and high humidity, the other issue with the campsite was that it was next to a busyish road carrying a lot of noisy trucks. Oh well, one gets what one pays for I suppose!
There was nothing much to do for the rest of the day except chill, or try to chill in the stifling temperatures, and fight off the rabid flies that seemed to be enjoying the heat more than we were.
Day 4 - Braemar Park Campground - Valley Stay Campground, NSW 04 February, 2023
Overnight the temperature dropped to a more comfortable 27°C, so we managed to sleep better than the previous couple of nights and also managed a sleep in.
It was after 9:30 A.M. when we got away from our campsite, driving south initially, then east towards Yamba to catch up with old friends of Meg's (Bec & Joel), who she used to work with, and who own a bakery there.
The first part of the drive was mainly through state forest, until we reached Lawrence where we crossed the Clarence River on the free ferry.
Once across the river, the remainder of the drive followed the Clarence River and the many waterways and tributaries that cover a huge area.
First stop in Yamba was to the Yamba Lighthouse to kill some time before lunch.
The lighthouse itself wasn't overly impressive, but the views of the surrounding coastline were spectacular.
Back in the Yamba town centre we wandered around checking out bakeries to try and find Meg's friends, with no luck, so we eventually asked at a bakery and were pointed in the right direction, at the Coles shopping centre we had passed on the way into Yamba.
We spent a bit of time catching up with Bec and Joel then bought some of their yummy sticky buns to have with our lunch.
We drove back out towards the M1 and lunched under the Harwood bridges, one the old original steel bridge and the other a newer concrete bridge.
That was it for another day of adventures, apart from driving to our campsite for the night at the Valley Stay Campground, about 80 km further south, and about 10 km outside Coffs Harbour.
The campground was small, quiet and had nice grassy unpowered sites for $20 per night, and a bonus fire pit with each site as well!
Day 5 - Valley Stay Campground - Dorrigo, NSW 05 February, 2023
Today's first stop was the outskirts of Coffs Harbour to empty the toilet cassette and fill up with fresh water, at a facility to the south of town that allowed us to skirt around Coffs Harbour and not get caught up in the heavy traffic.
With that done it was a short drive to the Coffs Harbour Butterfly House, where we paid the $26 per adult entry fee to get into the actual butterfly house, and which also provided access to other areas, but these were all children-focused and didn't appeal to us.
It was quite hot outside by the time we got to the butterfly house, and then we went into a hothouse-type building to see the butterflies, so it was quite stifling in there. It was well worth it though to see all the beautiful butterflies, learn a bit about them and even to see some butterflies that were newly hatched, and some almost hatched.
One of the kiddy-related attractions here was a sort of reconstruction of a Jurassic Park set with various dinosaurs in settings similar to the movie, which was reasonably interesting so we wandered around there before leaving for Bellingen.
Our next destination was Bellingen and we had a choice of taking the highway or the back roads, so of course we took the more picturesque route along winding narrow roads, some gravel, through state forests.
Our only stop in Bellingen was the The Old Butter Factory that has a history going back to the early 1900s.
We wandered around for a while to kill some time before lunch looking at the history and equipment from the early days of the factory, and also looked through all of the craft shops dotted around a rustic outdoor area. There was a silversmith shop, wood products shop, local produce shop where we bought a couple of things, and a home and other things shop where we also bought a couple of presents.
By then it was lunchtime and we sat in a beautiful airy outside dining area of the butter factory cafe and ate our lunch of lamb koftas for Meg and lamb focaccias for me, accompanied by a lovely cool and creamy milk shake.
We had considered staying in a free camp not far outside Bellingen, but it was still a bit too early to park up for the night, so we carried on driving to Dorrigo.
On the way into Dorrigo we stopped at the Dorrigo Rainforest Centre to check out their short 75 metre skywalk, do another short walk through Gondwanan forest and to try and find some pamphlets on the Dorrigo area. We came up empty-handed with the pamphlets and continued into Dorrigo to stock up on some supplies, then drove back out the way we'd come to the Dorrigo Mountain Holiday Park, our chosen campsite for the night. The campground was all powered sites with concrete pads and nice grassy areas, surrounded by trees and with nice views of the surrounding countryside.
A bonus was a huge nearby cell phone tower, so we had good internet coverage to catch up on our social and blogging for the rest of the day.
Day 6 - Dorrigo - Platypus Flat Campground, NSW 06 February, 2023
Today was the day we been trying for, for over 3 years, to start driving the Waterfall Way.
We’d had 2 failed attempts at arranging a Gleeson family get together in Dorrigo during the first couple of years of Covid, and with other family events occurring in the meantime, this was the first real chance we’d had to do Waterfall Way. Apart from the waterfalls there were apparently some impressive large Tallowood trees that we could see along the way.
We left the Dorrigo campground around 9:30 A.M. and drove the short distance to Dangar Falls.
After reading the information board about the local area and history, we walked down to the bottom of the falls, on what was mostly well-maintained wooden stairs. At the end of the walk we were treated to the impressive sight of the falls running into a large rock pool below, then running into a gentle stream heading back along the way we’d come. An adult and child were swimming in the rock pool – very brave we thought considering how cold it must’ve been.
Next up on our list for the day was to drive some back roads to check out a large Tallowood tree named Tibb’s Tree. The drive was interesting to say the least, over sealed and unsealed, narrow, winding roads, going uphill and down dale all the way. The roads were so winding and narrow, and potholed in places, that we had to drive very slowly in case any cars came in the opposite direction.
After driving about an hour and covering only around 20 km, we came to the place where the tree was supposed to be, but we couldn’t see any sign of it. After driving a bit past that point, then back to where we thought the tree should be, and walking around a bit, we discovered a sign that had been knocked down indicating that the tree was about 200 metres through dense, untamed forest. We decided that discretion was the better part of valour and gave up on seeing this particular tree, then drove back along the same road out to what was more of a main road.
Our second attempt at seeing a giant Tallowood tree involved another tortuous drive along similar roads, but this time the roads ran through state forests, so we had to also be aware of logging trucks meeting us head on, on sharp bends. This time we found the large Tallowwood Jack Feeney Memorial Tree (no, I don’t know who Jack Feeney was because there’s no internet ‘round these parts), but unfortunately it was just off the road and there wasn’t anywhere to park far off the road, so we had limited photo opportunities. Perhaps we’ll skip looking at big trees in the future!
By this time we were starting to think about where we would have lunch. We decided to drive some more, on the same sort of roads through state forest, to the Mobong Creek picnic area, a very picturesque spot beside the creek, surrounded by dense forest. After lunch and a wander down the small falls that run under the road to take some pic’s, it was back on the road again.
It was only just after 1 P.M. by this time, but we thought we should head to our designated campsite for the night, Platypus Flat Campground, in the Nymboi Binderay National Park. This drive was a short one too, like all the drives for the day, but was as slow as ever because the roads deteriorated more and more the closer we got to Platypus Flat.
Whatever complaining we may have done because of dodgy roads was quickly forgotten when we pulled into our designated campsite that Meg had booked the night before. This was an absolutely idyllic spot, surrounded by native forest and so close to the Nymboida River that we had to speak loudly to hear each other over the noise of water cascading over the rocks of the riverbed.
The site was very generous in width and included our own wooden picnic table and fire pit that doubled as a cooker with a hotplate and hook to hang pots on.
I guess because it was so idyllic one had to pay a price for the beautiful spot, and that price was no mobile signal or internet. However, in a place like that, it would be a shame to waste the experience by being glued to a screen.
We spent a beautiful evening sitting outside with a roaring fire, ate our dinner at the picnic table beside the fire, and enjoyed the magic setting.
Day 7 - Platypus Flat Campground - Thungutti Campground, New England NP, NSW 07 February, 2023
Being set in a valley, the sun was late to come up over our campsite, and with a total lack of noise apart from the rushing river, we managed a good sleep in this morning.
Because of our late rising it was close to 10:00 A.M. before we headed out of camp, to drive back into Dorrigo first, but this time via a different road that went through Bostobrick. The road into Platypus Flat the day before was pretty average, but the road to Dorrigo via Bostobrick was even worse. It was very slow going but we eventually made it out onto the main and into Dorrigo.
In Dorrigo we bought a few supplies and paid a visit to the dump point on the way out of town, before driving a short distance to Ebor to enjoy a view of the Ebor Falls. There was a short walk around from the car park that gave us a glimpse of the falls through a chain link fence, but that was all we got to see because there was a major redevelopment of the area under way and it was all fenced off.
A short drive from the falls we stopped at a café on the outskirts of Ebor for lunch, then carried on driving along Waterfall Way to the Cathedral Rock NP, where we wanted to do a 5 km walk to see some balancing rocks.
The walk was rated as a grade 4, so a little more difficult than we were used to, but it had been days since we’d had a good walk, or any exercise for that matter, so we thought it was time to get into it. The walk took us through not-so-dense forest, mostly on gravelled walkways, up steep hills and at times over and around rocks.
For most of the walk we were escorted by medium-sized orange butterflies that we thought may be Orange Lacewing butterflies, because we considered ourselves experts at butterfly identification after visiting the Coffs Harbour Butterfly House.
We had glimpses of the balancing rocks along the way, but not as good a look as we’d hoped for. By the time we got back to the car park we were quite tuckered out and decided to call it quits for the day and head to our campsite for the night in the Thungutti campground, in the New England NP, about 25 kms drive away.
The campground was set among dense forest, with once again generously sized gravel sites, and also once again with the fire pits we’d had the night before. There were a few other campers around, but generally it was very quiet.
As with the previous night, and like many national park campsites, there was no mobile reception or internet, so it was analogue activities again for the rest of the day.
The temps were a bit cooler than we had been used to so we cranked up the fire nice and early, donned our trackies and hoodies and sat outside, once again enjoying the peaceful setting. Well before dark the fog came down making it very eerie, and we expected it to set in for the night, but after about 15 minutes the fog lifted, before repeating that cycle several more times before dark.
Day 8 - Thungutti Campground - Armidale, NSW 08 February, 2023
The temperature dropped dramatically overnight, enough for me to have to drag out the doona in the middle of the night to keep warm. It was so cool and dim that we stayed in bed a bit later than usual and didn't get away from camp until around 9:30 A.M.
First up for the day was a short 3 km drive to Lookout Point, where apparently the views are spectacular and on a good you can see the east coast.
Well, we obviously picked the wrong day, or wrong time of day, because after doing the short walk to the lookout, all we could see were a few close trees and dense fog.
The walk was quite interesting though through dense bush covered completely in moss, so it had a bit of a prehistoric feel to it.
Next up was visit to the Dutton Trout Hatchery, near Ebor, and on the road towards Wollomombi, our next port of call. We read some of the available information on the hatchery, looked around the aquariums, watched a 6-minute video of the operation, then headed out on a self-guided tour of all the hatchery has to offer, complete with a large bag of fish food that smelt rather unpleasant.
Walking around the various ponds containing fish of different ages, we were surprised at how rabid the fish were when we threw food in for them. We soon learnt to stand back from the edges of pond, or throw the fish food further away to avoid getting wet.
After the tour we popped back into the reception area to buy some smoked trout for lunch before heading for Wollomombi Gorge.
After a 30 km drive we arrived at the Wollomombi Gorge carpark, which was the starting point for a number of walks, some short and some longer. It was a little early for lunch so we did one of the shorter walks, firstly to a huge viewing platform that gave us a great overview of the gorge, then up a hill to another viewing platform that gave us another perspective.
That worked up an appetite so we sat in Mata and enjoyed the smoked trout we'd bought at the hatchery, on toast with creamed cheese and sprinkled with red onion and pepper. Yum!
After that indulgence we needed to walk another of the tracks around the gorge to work off a few calories, and the 4 km Chandler Lookout walk around the top of the gorge seemed to fit the bill.
This walk was a grade 3, so not as demanding as the Cathedral Rock walk the day before, with well-formed tracks, but still entailed some steep climbs in temperatures that had increased steadily throughout the day.
The effort required for the walk was well worth it though, as we were afforded some spectacular views of the gorge itself, the Wollomombi River and falls, and the Chandler River and falls.
All tuckered out after expending that much energy, we decided to call it quits for the day and head to our campsite for the night, the Armidale Tourist Park campground, where we paid for a powered site (to get fresh water) for 2 nights.
Once setup for the night we did a load of washing, showered, then proceeded to enjoy the endless interwebs after being denied for the previous couple days. Initially sitting outside while the sun was shining it was quite pleasant, but then the clouds came over, the wind picked up enough to have us reaching for our hoodies, then the rain started becoming heavy enough to drive us inside for the night.
Day 9 - Armidale, NSW 09 February, 2023
After another leisurely start to the day we set off on the Armidale Self-Guided Driving tour, that covered around 25 km and 32 points of interest.
The tour covered many old buildings from the late 1800s to the early 1900s, churches, railway station, schools, lookouts, orphanage, cemetery etc.
The driving was easy for a change, and the paper information provided on the points of interest quite extensive, but the supplied map left a little to be desired at times. Thankfully I have a great wing man/navigator.
Many of the old buildings were quite grand, like the two-storey stationmaster's residence that was built in 1882, and "Esrom" (Morse in reverse), which was a substantial gentleman's residence built for Mr G.F. Morse in the 1890s from Armidale blue bricks.
Many other fine old buildings, like the Railway Hotel (1878) and St Patrick's Orphanage (1919) were dotted around the tour.
The Armidale Catholic Cathedral was also particularly impressive, inside and out.
The Apex and Drummond Lookout gave us a good view across Armidale.
On our travels around we called into a servo to fill up with diesel, 90 litres @ $2.12 per litre which hurt the credit card, and we also called into the local Woolies to stock up on stuff we'd run out of.
We timed the end of tour to be at the Aboriginal Cultural Centre for lunch, where we'd read they have a bush tucker cafe. Unfortunately, the cafe was closed so we wandered around the Aboriginal exhibits of artwork and artefacts for a while and supported the local economy by buying a gift made by a local indigenous artist from the giftshop.
That was all we planned for the day, so after a stop at Bunnings to buy some screws for our chairs that were falling to pieces, we drove back to the campground.
We had some chores planned for the afternoon, which we managed to do before the rain set in around 3 P.M., confining us to quarters for the rest of the day.
That should've been it for another day of adventures, however when Meg went to cook dinner we realised we'd forgotten to pack the pasta for that dish. Not wanting to pack up and move Mata again, I decided I'd pushbike the kilometre or so to the nearest shop, an Aldi supermarket, in between showers. I stripped off to the bare minimum required for the bike ride, in case I got rained on, then set off for Aldi. I managed to get there and back with no dramas and only a few drops of rain hampering me.
Day 10 - Armidale - Walcha, NSW 10 February, 2023
It was another cool start to the day, very cloudy and dull, so we weren't in any rush to get away from camp.
We took off from the campsite about 9:00 A.M. headed for Dangars Gorge, which was only a 23 km drive south.
We stopped on the way, as we turned off onto Dangar Falls Road, to take a look at the Dangarsleigh War Memorial. It was erected by Albert H. Perrot as a memorial to 16 local lads, one of them his eldest son, Alfred, who died in Passchendaele Ridge in 1917, in 1921.
From there it was a short 5 km drive to the Dangars Gorge carpark on a gravel road that was well maintained.
First up we did a couple of shorter walks, one only 100 metres, and the other 300 metres, that gave us our first look at Dangars Falls and the surrounding gorge. Those first glimpses were quite spectacular, despite the fact that there wasn't much water coming over the falls.
Next up it was time for a more strenuous 2.2 km return walk to Rock Wallaby Lookout.
This walk wasn't difficult as it was on well formed paths, but did involve some steep climbs and stairs to get up to the lookout points.
The initial views we'd had of the gorge on the earlier two short walks paled in comparison to the views we had on this walk, firstly from the Dangars Falls Lookout, then from the Rock Wallaby Lookout, 300 metres down to the bottom of the gorge.
As good as modern mobile phone cameras are these day, there's no way we could capture what our eyes were seeing in a single shot.
Feeling that we'd had enough exercise for the day, we took to the back roads again, headed to Uralla for lunch.
Meg's research on the way had turned up the Pie Mechanic, which turned out to sell really good pies. We grabbed a pie each and drove to the information centre car park, and ate the pies in the adjacent park.
After a quick visit to the information centre we drove around the corner to the McCrossin's Mill Museum, an excellent little museum housed in a restored three-storey flour mill, that was built in the 1870s. The mill, which is a multi-award winning museum, also contains a gallery and function centre.
Just looking around the old mill building itself was a treat, with its original timber walls and timber floors worn smooth by the passage of thousands of feet over 150 years.
There were some more traditional displays that you find in other similar heritage-type museums, but they also had some excellent displays on the Chinese influence during the gold rush years, an amazing lace collection and, of course, a couple of rooms devoted to the story of Frederick Ward, better known around them thar parts as "Thunderbolt".
We drove out of Uralla towards Walcha, with one more stop planned for the day, at Sunhill Dairy Goats. We'd read that you could do a tour around their facility, but we only wanted to find out a bit about their operation, and check out the gift shop for some yummy cheeses.
We were met by the owner who told us a bit about the goats and milking, then went out back to put together some tasting portions of the six cheeses they make. We had a look around the small gift shop while he was doing that, and purchased some "Bub Rub" in case our new grandson Leo needed it.
We weren't expecting the cheese tasting but were pleasantly surprised by how good they were, even the feta coated with ash that was imported from France. My favourite was the herb and garlic feta, which we bought a jar of before heading back on the road again, for the last time for the day, to a free camp just outside Walcha.
Before settling into the campsite, we had bit of a drive around Walcha to see some of the sculptures in the sculpture walking tour, that we planned to do the next day. What we saw wasn't that impressive, so we drove back out to the campsite, which was a small park on the side of the road into Walcha.
We sat under the shade of a tree for the rest of the afternoon, catching up on our usual socials, blogging and Duolingo.
Day 11 - Walcha - Bretti Reserve Free Camp, Nr Gloucester, NSW 11 February, 2023
We woke to another cool, damp from the previous night’s rain, and slightly foggy morning, so we took our time with the morning routine, waiting for the sun to start doing its thing before venturing out for the day’s activities.
It was after 9:00 A.M. before we drove into Walcha to do their sculpture trail walking tour around the town.
We wandered around for an hour or so looking at the almost 50 sculptures dotted mostly around the central town streets. The sculptures were a mixture of wood, metal, concrete and mosaics.
We could appreciate maybe half a dozen of the sculptures, but most of them were more modern art that didn’t do anything for us. A lot were practical sculptures, like artful wooden seats and wooden shop front supporting posts. A 5.5 M, galvanised steel whale was one of the more impressive pieces.
Perhaps better than the actual sculptures was the walk along the banks of the Apsley River levee banks, where many of the sculptures were located. The parkland that the river runs through was very well maintained, with plentiful trees, plants and flowers.
That was mostly all we had planned for the day, so it was back on the road again, to drive along Thunderbolt’s Way towards Gloucester. After the previous few days’ drives, this was a bit boring along mostly well-sealed roads, with long, straight stretches at times through hilly farming country.
There were a couple of spectacular lookouts along the way, and we stopped at the first one briefly to take a pic, then carried on to the second lookout where we stopped for lunch.
When we set out from Walcha the temperature was only about 18 degrees, and we’d become accustomed to the cooler temps over the past few days. When we arrived at our chosen campsite for the night, at the Bretti Reserve free camp about 30 km north of Gloucester, we got a rude shock when we stepped outside into 31 degrees. The other thing that shocked us was the number of campers already at the camp, probably approaching a hundred
As soon as we got set up for the night we walked the short distance down to the nearby Barnard River to assess whether we could jump in to cool off.
There was a causeway across the river, that appeared to be an accessway for a property up the hill behind the river, which we walked across to check out suitable swimming spots up and down the river. There were families camped right next to the river, and a few people floating down the river who had obviously walked further upstream to enjoy the ride back downstream. We walked further back along the river past where we were camped and found a spot that we could get easily get into the river for a sit down and cool off. I had my swimmers on so gave it a shot, and gasped a bit at the coolness. Perseverance was the order of the day though, because it was so hot. We also learnt from that initial dip in the rocky-bottomed river, that we would need to wear our reef shoes for later swims.
Back at our campsite we chilled for a bit, but were soon overcome by the heat and went back to the river again for a longer sit in the cooling water.
This campsite was far enough out of Gloucester that we didn't have any mobile coverage or internet, so we were restricted to amusing ourselves for the rest of the day, mostly by watching the antics of the many bogan families around us, and trying to stay cool with more dips in the river.
Day 12 - Bretti Reserve Free Camp - Gloucester, NSW 12 February, 2023
With nothing more planned for the day than a 30 km to Gloucester, we weren't in any hurry to leave camp.
We broke camp around 9:00 A.M., and enjoyed the scenic drive along the winding, hilly road to Gloucester, stopping only once at the Kia Ora Lookout just outside Gloucester, and arriving there before 10:00 A.M.
We had booked a site in a campground, but it was way too early to go there, so we did a bit of shopping to kill some time, then drove to the Gloucester Aboriginal Park, a very large and well-maintained park in the middle of town, with the Gloucester River flowing through it.
We had a short walk to the Human Sundial in the park, then parked up under some trees and caught up with stuff that required internet, after not having had any the previous day.
After a nice cool salad lunch we drove a few hundred metres to the Gloucester Holiday Park and paid for an unpowered site for the night.
To our pleasant surprise, the holiday park had a huge grassed area for unpowered campers, which also bordered the slow-running Gloucester River. The other bonus was, unlike the previous night, there was only one other motorhome in the unpowered area, and they were about a hundreds metres away.
We chose a campsite that was as far away from other people as we could get, which was right in the back corner of the campground, and only 50 metres from the river. However, that left us with the issue of being a long walk away from the amenities block, so we unloaded and dusted off the bikes for doing toilet/shower runs. Problem solved!
We parked under a large tree, set up for the night, donned our swimmers and wandered to 50 or so metres down to the river to cool off from the 34 degree heat.
The water was a little cooler than we like, but once in and acclimatised it was perfect. We wandered along the riverbank looking for deeper areas and eventually found one where we could sit in the water up to our shoulders, under the shade of the nearby trees.
Then it was time for some chilling, which we did sitting outside all by ourselves in the shade of a large tree that we were parked beside.
Once the sun started going down behind the large trees bordering the campground we got the firepit out and sat outside beside the fire enjoying the beautiful evening.
Day 13 - Gloucester - Moonan Brook Campground, NSW 13 February, 2023
We weren’t in any hurry today because Zac was driving from Maitland to visit us for a while.
After Zac arrived around 9:30 A.M. he drove us all into the main shopping area of Gloucester where we had a nice brunch at Roadies Café.
Back at Mata we had a cuppa and sat around chatting for a while, then we packed up ready to continue our journey west to Moonan Brook where we would stay the night. Zac decided he would drive part of the way with us, before heading back to Maitland.
We had hoped to go to the Polblue Swamp walk, but Google Maps informed us that the road there was closed, which led us to choose another alternative route over unknown roads.
The initial part of the drive was back through Barrington, on Thunderbolts Way, then we turned off onto the Woko National Park road, which purported to go to Scone. Turns out the roads were really bad, gravelled with runnels and potholes, very steep and winding for a large part of it, to the point that we considered turning around and finding another route. The first 50 km took us about 2 hours to cover. We weren’t so concerned for ourselves because we were using high range 4WD, but Zac was in his old 2-wheel drive Lancer. We eventually got to the point where we’d come too far to go back, so we soldiered on with the roads becoming increasingly worse as we climbed further up the hills.
At a brief stopping point that looked to be near the highest point we would have to climb to, Zac mentioned that his car was about at its limit for climbing the very steep sections with a loose surface, as even in
1st gear the car was losing traction. The road did get slightly worse from that point, but then we emerged on the top of the hills and the road surface improved greatly for the drive across the top of the hills and the descent back down to the valley floor.
As well as navigating the very bad roads and watching out for other vehicles coming in the opposite direction, we had to contend with hundreds of cows on the road, and of course driving through mountains of cow poo!
At one very narrow section of the road going uphill we met a group of motorcyclists going in the other direction who were travelling way too fast, and not expecting to encounter other vehicles obviously, because one braked too hard and ended up in the grass at the side of the road. Luckily it was the hill side of the road and not the sheer drop on the other side.
After about 3.5 hours of hard slog we arrived at the point where Zac was heading in the direction of Scone to get home, and we were turning off onto another gravel road towards our campsite.
After saying our goodbyes we drove another 5 km to the Moonan Brook Campground, a beautiful little spot where we parked up right beside the brook, a gently flowing body of water that would be a relief on a hot day, with a few man-made pools that you could cool off in. For such a nice place I was surprised that it was voluntary donation only to stay there.
As with most of the really nice places we’d stayed on this trip, there was no mobile coverage to entertain us, so we had to make do with analogue activities again.
Once again, as the sun was setting, we put up the firepit and got the fire stoked up, burning the last of our current supply of wood, and enjoyed sitting outside on another beautiful evening.
Day 14 - Moonan Brook Campground - Cassilis, NSW 14 February, 2023
We had an easy driving day planned today from our campsite at Moonan Brook, via Scone, to Cassilis, about 175 km further west.
Thankfully the roads were all sealed for the day's drive, but many parts were in very poor condition, which made for slow going at times.
We stopped briefly in central Scone to grab a few supplies and empty the toilet cassette, then headed out along the Merriwa road to the Hunter Warbirds Museum, which was only 5 km outside Scone.
This place is one of those pleasant surprises that you wouldn't expect to find in a small country town.
The museum's theme was warplanes from World War 1, through to modern times. While not as impressive as other similar museums we've visited, the exhibits they had on display were immaculately presented and there was plenty of information available on most of them. There was also a lot of information on pilots local to the region who'd participated in both world wars, the Korean War and the Vietnam War, and exhibits of related items such as personal items of some of the pilots featured in the museum.
My personal favourite, and I'm sure the favourite of many others, was the WW 2 Supermarine Spitfire.
Of all the planes displayed there, there were only three that aren't capable of flying, all jet fighters.
Back on the road we drove for a while then stopped at a small roadside picnic area to have lunch, before continuing on to Cassilis where we parked up in a small camping area adjacent to the local lawn bowls club.
Once we were setup for the night we wandered over the St Columba Anglican Church, which was opened in 1900, for a wander around the church, but not inside because it was locked, and around the adjacent cemetery.
For a reasonably remote small town, Cassilis offered good internet, so we got stuck into that to catch up on all our usuals that we couldn't do the previous night.
We sat outside initially, but eventually the strong, cool wind drove us inside for the rest of the day and evening, apart from a brief visit to the bowls club to pay our dues for the campsite, and to support the locals by having a beer.
Day 15 - Cassilis - Coolah Tops, NSW 15 February, 2023
We had another very short drive today, of only 75 km, to Coolah Tops where we’d booked a site in one of the National Parks campsites.
However, what should’ve been an easy day of driving turned out to be anything but, mainly because we wanted to avoid the Golden Highway and stick to the back roads like we usually do.
After leaving camp around 9:00 A.M. we drove the short distance back into Cassilis, then turned off onto the Coolah Road, which was the first challenge of the day. It was only about 10 km to the next stretch of sealed road, but because the road surface was in very poor condition, we had to drive very slowly so Mata didn’t get shaken to pieces from the corrugations.
The next road we turned onto was sealed, but once again in quite poor condition in many places, so it was slow going again, until we reached The Forest Road. The first glimpse of that road prompted the engagement of 4WD.
Well, we’ve travelled on some rough roads in our travels, but this one would rate amongst the top 4 or 5 worst roads we’ve been on. From that point it was only about 15 km to our first stop for the day at Norfolk Falls, but at a maximum of 20 km/h for the majority of that section, it was extremely slow going, and many parts required slower than walking pace to navigate the many runnels, potholes and damaged parts of the road.
Along the way we saw a Red-Bellied Black snake crossing the road in front of us on the sealed road before the state forest road, Crimson Rosellas, goats that we assumed were wild, kangaroos and wallabies and eagles.
Once at Norfolk Falls we decided that because it was such a remote place, and there were no other people for dozens of kilometres around, that we should load up the backpack with the first aid kit, the snakebite bandage, the PLB (Personal Locator Beacon), some snacks and plenty of water, for the walk to the falls.
The walk to the viewing platforms was easyish, but went downhill all the way, so we knew we were in for some huffing and puffing on the way back up. The first platform had a side-on view of the falls, that was running but not very fast, and the second took us to the top of the falls.
Back up at the top we continued driving on The Forest Road for a short distance, then turned off onto The Pinnacle Lookout Road, headed for the Bundella Lookout.
It was lunchtime by then so we fed and watered ourselves before walking the short distance to the Bundella Lookout. As we were approaching the lookout a large Wedge-Tailed Eagle was flying just above the treetops above us, around in circles, appearing as if it was stalking us. The view across the Liverpool Plains towards Gunnedah, as far west as the Warrumbungles and towards the north were breathtaking and well worth the drive in.
Next up we did the 1.5 km Pinnacle Lookout walking track, another easy grade 3 track, which gave us another perspective from the Bundella Lookout, looking more to the north-west.
Our last little adventure for the day saw us driving back towards our campsite for the night, and stopping just short of the turnoff, to do the Grass Trees Walk. This walk took us through lightly treed scrubby country and past some ancient stands of grass trees, that were believed to be hundreds of years old.
They were certainly the biggest grass trees we’d ever seen, many of them with double trunks and even one with three trunks.
From there it was less than a kilometre to the campsite, at the National Park Cox’s Creek Campground, where we got set up for the night. In doing so I realised that I’d lost my fly-swatting switch that we’d bought in Eulo, QLD on a previous trip. After much frantic searching I thought that I must’ve dropped it getting into the car at the grass trees, so I walked back there but came up empty-handed. A mystery!
Back at camp Meg had been gathering firewood for the next time we could have a fire, but there was a current fire ban on open fires in the national parks at that time, so we couldn’t have one this night. When I told Meg that I didn't find my switch she very kindly made me one from a stick and some rope that we carry with us.
Obviously, as we were in a national park miles from anywhere, we didn’t have any internet to amuse us, but we made the most of our surroundings because of that.
Because we were sitting outside so quietly we were visited by a family of kangaroos that were enjoying the grass around where we were parked. They came right up to us, showing no fear, and when I held up an open hand as if to give food, one approached me close enough to take food if I’d had any. From that interaction I assumed that previous campers must’ve been feeding them, probably with inappropriate food.
Day 16 - Coolah Tops - Camp Wambelong, Warrumbungle NP, NSW 16 February, 2023
We must be creatures of habit because we were on the road at 9:00 A.M again, for the umpteenth time in a row.
Leaving the campground, we drove the few hundred metres back to the Grass Trees Walk carpark to search for my fly-swatting switch that I’d lost the day before. As soon as we pulled into the carpark I glanced around and saw the switch lying on the ground where we’d been parked the day before. Mystery solved!
The first order of the day was driving back along The Forest Road that we’d travelled the day before, knowing this time what we were in for. It was still bad, but didn’t seem quite as bad as driving up to the tops, and we were back on sealed roads in less than an hour.
We wanted to avoid going into Coolah so it was back onto the back roads, headed for Coonabarabran. The roads were all very rough, potholed in many random places, so the going was quite slow again, but that didn’t bother us as we had all day to cover only around 110 km.
In Coonabarabran we visited the dump point first up to empty the toilet cassette and fill up with fresh water at the same place. It was only after starting to fill the fresh water tank that Meg noticed a sign saying the water was non-potable. Oops!
At the top of the road where the dump point was we spotted another Explorer parked up, so we pulled in behind them and introduced ourselves to Lorraine and Rick #205 Vision. After chatting for a bit we discovered that they were also going to be staying in the Warrumbungle NP for the next 4 nights, so we expected to bump into each other quite a lot over the next few days, even though they were staying in a different camp to us.
Thinking that we’d find another source of water later we popped into Woolies to stock up the cupboards and fridge, then we wandered along the main street to the local bakery for our lunch.
There was nowhere nice that was close to eat lunch so we jumped in Mata, drove along the road and found a shady tree to park under, where we scoffed lunch and caught up on some internet things, because the next 3 nights in the Warrumbungle NP would be without internet.
With all the chores out of the way we continued the drive into the Warrumbungles, stopping first at the Whitegum Lookout, an easy 1 km walk, which gave us amazing views of the Warrumbungles and out over the seemingly endless plains to the west.
Our next stop was to the Warrumbungle Visitor Centre to ask about a walk we wanted to do over the next few days, and to do the short walk around the centre. The walk was another easy one, but the temperature had risen to over 30 degrees by that stage, so we walked quite slowly reading the information boards and looking for the ever-elusive Koalas that supposedly inhabited some of the trees around the area. We did see what we thought may have been Koala scat, but didn’t see any other evidence that Koalas still exist in the wild.
On the drive to our campsite we stopped in at Camp Blackman because they supposedly had fresh water, but we left there without finding any.
That was all we had planned for the day, apart from to drive to our camp, but we did drive a little way past to check out a couple of walks we planned for the next few days, and to see if it would be possible to bike to them, rather than pack up Mata to drive there.
With that sorted we drove back to Camp Wambelong, which would be our home for the next three nights. The camp wasn’t as spectacular as some we’d stayed in recently, but was clean and grassy, and was also situated beside a small, slow-running creek, that we could make use off if the temperatures stayed in the thirties.
It didn’t take us long to set up and check out the creek, which had surprisingly warm water.
With no internet or TV, it was back to the old-school activities for the rest of the day and evening.
Day 17 - Camp Wambelong, Warrumbungle NP, NSW 17 February, 2023
Despite our best efforts to be up and about a bit earlier this morning, to do a walk before it got too hot, we didn’t get up until our usual time.
The only activity planned for the day was a 3.5 km walk to Tara Cave, which involved a short drive to get to the starting point, so we had to pack up most of our stuff, apart from the outside things, before we could go anywhere.
We did manage to get away from camp by 8:45 A.M., which was a slight improvement on our usual departure time.
It was only about a 3 km drive to the Old Woolshed Picnic Area, where the walk started from, so we were all suited up with hats, backpack, water and fly swatters, and on the track before 9:00 A.M.
The walk was described as easy, which it mainly was because of the excellent walking path, which even included sections that were paved with bricks, but like many of our recent walks, it was uphill almost all the way. The only really challenging bit was crossing a small creek near the start of the walk, but the water level was low and somebody had kindly placed some larger rocks across the creek so that we didn’t have to get wet feet.
The 1.7 km walk up to the top took us to the Tara Cave, an important Aboriginal location that had been in use for around 5,000 years, and which was an important meeting place.
Unfortunately, the front of the cave was fenced off, which made it hard to really see very much inside the cave. At the front you could see grooves worn in the rocks where tools were sharpened.
The walking ended at the cave, so once we’d taken some pic’s and enjoyed the views across the Warrumbungles, we turned around and walked back to the picnic area.
Back at our campsite we set up again with the knowledge that we wouldn’t have to do that again for the next couple of days because we had another two nights at the campsite, and we wouldn’t be driving anywhere the next day.
The next day we planned to do another walk, which was closer to camp, and which we could use the bikes for to get to the start point. However, the bikes were absolutely filthy, covered in layers of dust from sitting on the back of Mata over all those dirt and gravel roads.
After smoko I went down to the creek, filled up a bucket of water, and washed down the bikes so that they would be clean enough to use the next day. Apart from a little bit of cleaning in the cab and having long-needed showers, we spent the remainder of the day relaxing, reading, doing crosswords and watching and listening to nature happen around, like the many orange and larger black butterflies, tiny wrens, noisy cockatoos, noisier cicadas and kangaroos.
The peace was shattered when two caravans pulled up right beside us with two older couples, which normally wouldn’t be an issue, but these people, one woman in particular, were loud, incessant yabberers to the point that we felt like moving away from them.
The only answer was to turn our music up and drink some more to dull the pain, which is why I didn’t feel very well the next morning.
Day 18 - Camp Wambelong, Warrumbungle NP, NSW 18 February, 2023
Our only planned outing for the day was to do the Burbie Canyon bush walk.
We set out earlyish on our bikes to ride to the start point of the walk, which was less than a kilometre along the road from the camp.
Once the bikes were locked up to a sign, we crossed the road to where the track started, and began the 2 km return walk.
This is one of the least remarkable walks we’d ever done. Not horrible, just not much to recommend it. It followed a small creek that was only running in a few places, and we had to cross the creek/creek bed a few times during the walk.
We saw a small snake at the start of the track, which we thought may have been a female or juvenile Red-Bellied Black snake, as it wasn’t very long, so this made us extra vigilant for the rest of the walk. Meg had actually walked past the snake before I saw it slithering behind some rocks on the side of the path.
Apart from that close encounter we only saw a couple of kangaroos for the rest of the journey and, of course, we had the ever-present chorus of cicadas as background music. We did see a lot of scat, some probably wombat, definitely some goat, rabbit and ‘roo. And a lot of the bush along the track had been thoroughly rooted around in – wombat?
We were back at camp before 10:30 A.M. and had the rest of the day and evening to fill in with no plans at all.
After lunch the temperature had climbed in the 30s, so we found a small pool in the creek to sit in for a while to cool ourselves off.
We held off with cooking dinner because it was still too hot to crank up the gas burners, and as we were sitting outside we watched storm clouds moving towards us from the north, and listened to the sound of distant thunder. We didn't expect much to come of it, but eventually a few drops of rains forced us to move further under the awning.
Then, all hell broke loose! The wind changed direction quickly and increased in speed to the point that we had to run to put the awning in before it was torn off Mata, and move everything either under cover or inside as the rain started pelting down. The rain was so heavy and wind-blown for a time we had to close windows to stop it coming inside, which wasn't very pleasant because it was still quite hot.
Eventually the worst of the storm passed but the rain continued for some time into the night.
Day 19 - Camp Wambelong - Gunnedah, NSW 19 February, 2023
We didn't have anything touristy to do today, only drive to Gunnedah, where we'd be spending the next 4 nights to help Meg's mum, Helen, with her move into her brand new retirement village apartment.
There was a little extra clean up to do after the previous night's storm, but we were still on the road before 9:00 A.M., with only about 100 km to drive for the day.
Despite driving slowly, partly because the roads were so rough, we still arrived in Gunnedah by 10:30 A.M.
We popped into the local Woolies and BWS to stock up on essential supplies, and went to search for Helen but couldn't find her, so we checked into the Gunnedah RV Campground for 4 nights.
After a quick lunch we did some cleaning to spruce up Mata, did a load of washing, then waited for Helen to come and visit us, which she did a little while later.
We sat around outside in the shade, trying to catch some breeze in the 36 degree temp's, and made a plan of attack for the next few days.
Helen kindly gave us the use of her car for the next few days, which would make it easier for us to get around without having to pack up Mata, or resort to bikes.
The rest of the day was spent relaxing and catching up with internet things that we hadn't had access to for the last 3 days, and trying to stay cool because the temperature was still 36 degrees at 5:00 P.M.
Day 20 - Gunnedah, NSW 20 February, 2023
We had a fitful sleep overnight because the campground is on a busy road with a lot of heavy vehicle traffic, and also the railway line is on the other side of the road, and the trains run day and night mostly hauling coal. Also, because there's a level crossing nearby, the trains have to blow their horns when approaching it, which just adds to the nocturnal cacophony.
Today and the next couple of days were all about doing whatever we could to help Helen with her move into the Oak Tree Retirement Village.
This firstly entailed an 8:00 A.M. visit to Oak Tree to hopefully meet the NBN installer, who was supposed to be there between sometime between 8 and midday. After waiting for some time we gave up on meeting him and went back to camp until we heard from the manager at Oak Tree.
We got a text at 11:00 A.M. saying that the installer was on his way, so we piled into the car and headed back to Oak Tree. We gave up when he hadn't arrived by midday and, just as we were driving away, we spotted him arriving. I had a brief chat with him to see what the deal was and left him to it.
Back at camp we had lunch, and while relaxing after cleaning up, we had a call from Helen, who had had a call from the NBN installer, regarding the NBN installation that she didn't understand, so I got back in the car and drove back to Oak Tree for the third time for the day. There was an issue with the installation which meant the installer couldn't continue, so I relayed that to the Oak Tree manager, who relayed that to the project manager, who relayed that to the construction manager.....
Unfortunately there was another issue with the apartment too, a water leak that had manifested in the powder room over the weekend, and which had leaked water onto some carpet. There were people everywhere cleaning and drying carpet, fixing the water leak and putting things back to rights.
At that point I couldn't do anymore, so did some shopping on the way back to camp, where the temperature had reached 36 degrees again.
A little sick of getting in a hot car again, I initially wasn't sure about going to the Gunnedah pool to cool off, but eventually relented and was very pleased that I did. The pool was empty apart from us, as it was just before school chucked out, so we enjoyed getting cool in peace.
That was enough drama for one day, so relaxation was the order for the remainder of the day, eating up those interwebs.
Day 21 - Gunnedah, NSW 21 February, 2023
Being so tired from not sleeping well the previous night, we slept a little better, but decided that the campground was way too noisy with the trains and trucks running all night, and that we would move to another campground later in the day.
Apart from a brief shopping expedition to Jaycar to get a charging cable for my earbuds, we hung around camp waiting for Oak Tree to let us know we could pick up the keys for the apartment.
After receiving the call we headed over to the apartment, taking a few bits and pieces with us to make moving day the next day a little easier. We did what we could there, fielded some calls from Telstra related to a new NBN connection appointment, then drove to the Railway Hotel for lunch.
Lunch was typical pub fare, big on quantity and average on quality.
After dropping Helen off we drove back to our camp, packed up and moved to the Gunnedah Tourist Caravan Park, not far from the town centre. We paid for two nights, got set up, then jumped in the swimming pool that was only 50 metres from where we were camped.
With nothing more we could do we treated ourselves to some relaxation for the rest of the day.
Day 22 - Gunnedah, NSW 22 February, 2023
Today was move day to move Helen into her retirement village unit.
The removalist was due to arrive at the unit at 10:00 A.M. so we got there half an hour earlier and did what we could before waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the removalist to arrive. When they eventually did arrive it was 11:30 A.M. We weren't very amused but couldn't do anything about it.
All the stuff was off the truck and inside the unit within a couple of hours, which left a huge mess of boxes and assorted furniture for us to sort out for the rest of the day.
Apart from me doing a lunch run to the bakery, and three trips to Jaycar to get a new TV antenna lead that would fit the wall socket, we worked away at doing as much as possible to make the place liveable, at the least for the first night.
Despite the three trips to Jaycar for the correct TV antenna lead, when I turned the TV on to test it, it had audio but no video. After initially blaming the antenna we realised the old TV had probably died with the move to storage in Tamworth, then back to the unit in Gunnedah.
We called it a day about 4:00 P.M. and left Helen unpacking items that she could manage, while we detoured to the shops for some supplies before heading back to camp.
It had been a long, stressful day so we just chilled for the rest of the day.
Day 23 - Gunnedah, NSW 23 February, 2023
Today was going to be similar to the day before, spending most of our time at Oak Tree getting Helen settled into her new unit, with some minor variations.
Once packed up we went out in search of a new TV to replace the old broken one, and a small desk of some kind that could be used to house Helen’s laptop.
Harvey Norman had the perfect TV, a 40 inch Hi-Sense smart TV, that was only $395.
Kmart had a small hall table that fit the bill for a laptop table and it was only about $40.
Back at the new unit we continued to unpack boxes, setup the new TV, put together the laptop table and generally sorted as much as we possibly could to make sure Helen was comfortable in her new surroundings.
Early afternoon we did a dump run to ditch the old TV and some packing boxes, then went to the bakery to grab some pies for lunch, which we ate back at the unit.
We had some afternoon lessons to show Helen how to use her new dishwasher and the new TV, then drove to a rest stop beside the highway about 12 km out of Gunnedah, a free camp for the night.
As soon as we got set up for the night we regretted stopping there because the traffic was constant and noisy, but we didn’t have the energy to move anywhere else.
That all changed when a couple of redneck vehicles came into the rest area, one announcing his arrival in a 4WD tradie ute by skidding around the gravelled area before coming to a stop. The other car was a Falcon being driven a red P-plater with a couple of other passengers. After a while, just before leaving the rest area the 4WD owner did huge donuts not far from us, which sent up a huge cloud of dust that moved across us slowly, and coated everything inside and out with dust, and peppered the side of the vehicle with gravel. Once the dust settled down the red car started leaving so we took photos, thinking it had being doing donuts too. The people in the car took exception to that and we had a verbal confrontation before they left.
We felt uncomfortable after that being in such an exposed place and thinking the rednecks might come back, so we packed up quickly and drove about 20 km to the Reflections campground at Lake Keepit. It was after 7:00 P.M. by this time, and the office was unstaffed, but a sign gave us the code to raise the boom gate, which we did, then found a generous campsite down beside the lake. There was a cold wind blowing so we stayed inside for the rest of the night, sleeping well knowing we were safe.
Day 24 - Gunnedah - Bingara, NSW 24 February, 2023
Before leaving the campground we had to pay for our campsite, but the office didn’t open until 9:00 A.M., so we loitered around until then, paid our dues and hit the road, heading for Bingara.
Our first stop was a dump point in Manilla, which was located at a really nice "Freedom Camp", that had a lot of shady trees over a large grassy area.
Another 45 km along the road to Bingara, we made a couple of stops in Barraba, the first to take some pics of the water diviner silo art on the way into town, and in the town itself to take pics of the wall art.
Back on the road we carried on to Bingara, arriving around 11:30 A.M.
The first item of interest we'd read about was The Living Classroom, an 11-year old project that teaches people about land use. We'd read that there was a track there that explaining bush tucker in different ecosystems, which we were interested in learning about. We had a look around but couldn't find anything like that, so we gave up and drove back into the main part of Bingara.
After parking up just off the main street we took some photos of a couple of wall art installations, the Peters Milk Bar, and the Roxy Theatre and Greek Museum.
All of these points of interest were close to the local IGA, so we popped in to get a few things we needed before walking back to our parking spot.
For lunch, we drove up to the Bingara Lookout and enjoyed the views while eating.
With all the touristing done for the day, all that remained to do was to find a nice, free campsite beside the Gwydir River, which proved a little more difficult than expected.
The first place we tried was tiny and there was already someone else there.
The next place we looked at was the Faithful campsite, and once again someone else had grabbed the prime spot closest to the entrance. We drove further along the rough dirt track assessing other possibilities, and decided we didn't want to drive out again, so we chose a less than optimal site that was nice and close to the river, but wasn't very level and was covered in long grass.
During the afternoon, we had to move to the front of Mata to avoid the sun and some time later as we were relaxing with drinks, another Explorer drove in behind us. It was #196 TV Phil and Jo from Northern Rivers, NSW, who were out on a short trip between medical appointments.
We chilled for the rest of the afternoon and evening, using the sometimes internet that disappeared at times, and enjoyed the sights and sounds of nature that included ducks, one of which wouldn't go away until we fed it some muesli, Kookaburras, Cockatoos and Corellas.
After dinner we sat outside for a while star-gazing until some small bitey things started snacking on us.
Day 25 - Bingara - Ben Lomond, NSW 25 February, 2023
For the first time in a while, we had a day full of touristy stuff to do today.
We got away from our campsite beside the Gwydir River not long after 8:30 A.M., drove back through Bingara and out onto the B95, heading north east to the Myall Creek Massacre Memorial site.
We were the only ones there when we arrived, which we like. We got suited up with shoes, hats and switches, then read the information boards closest to the carpark, before setting out on the 500 metre memorial walk, on red gravel that signified the blood spilt during the massacre.
The whole memorial area was thoughtfully and simply laid out, with plaques every 50 metres or so describing the events of the day when 28 Aboriginal women, children and old men were slaughtered in cold blood by a local settler and his henchmen. It was obviously very sad and thought-provoking to read the details of the massacre. Eventually, after two trials, seven of the eleven perpetrators were convicted and executed, but sadly the ringleader escaped conviction.
Leaving Myall Creek we continued driving west towards Inverell, and turned off short of the town to visit Olives of Beaulieu, a family owned olive grove and tourist attraction, with cellar door sales of olive products and estate manufactured spice blends, sauces and regional foods. This was another one of those unexpected pleasures that we were pleased we to took the time to visit.
A lady who we presumed was the owner met us as we pulled up and walked into the small shop. We looked around at all the yummy offerings while the lady prepared some tastings for us. We started the tasting with plain olive oil, which weirdly, as the lady pointed out, had an aftertaste of tomatoes. We then graduated onto garlic olive oil, that had a really strong garlic taste - YUM! Following that we tried olive oil that was mixed with Greek yoghurt and a dukkha-type dry spice, which was surprisingly delicious. Then it was onto tasting other dried spices including dukkha (Egyptian), zatar (Lebanese), harissa (Tunisian) and squisito (Italian). Unfortunately she had run out of the Indian Hurry Curry spice. To finish off we tasted some green and black olives.
Everything we tasted was so delicious we bought some olives, dukkha and a packet of "Sour Bitch" dried citrus fruits (to go in Meg's G&T).
Back on the road we continued driving to Inverell, but skirted around the outside to avoid the town, which was busy with its annual show, and pulled into the National Transport Museum, on the outskirts of Inverell.
For a smallish country town, this was one of the better motor museums we've visited.
They had a large range of vehicles from the early 1900s up to modern times, including cars, utes, trucks and motorbikes. There were quite a few early Model T and Model A Fords, Pontiacs, Chevrolets, Rolls Royces, Bentleys, an assortment of other vehicles I hadn't heard of previously, and the usual array of Australian Fords and Holdens.
The collection included the usual car museum basics of petrol pumps, car manuals and other motoring paraphernalia, and also had a collection of dolls, wedding cakes and wedding dresses.
Next up on our adventurous day was a drive to New England Woodturning at Gilgai. This was another one of those unexpected surprises that we discovered on WikiCamps, and we were so pleased we took the time to visit.
Rob is the proprietor and the mastermind behind all the wooden goods in the shop, all the metal sculptures scattered around the grounds, as well as being a very accomplished digeridoo maker and player.
Rob makes everything from scratch, from felling and milling the timber to carving and sculpting the thousands of items on display, the majority of which are for sale.
He is an extremely talented and friendly person who loves to show off his talents. When Meg mentioned that she loves hearing the digeridoo being played, Rob happily obliged, starting with a couple of symphony digeridoos, followed by an amusing piece on his self-designed steampunk digeridoo, the lastly a different kind of digeridoo that he generally uses to scare overseas tourists with after telling them scary stories around the campfire.
We were so impressed with his playing that we bought a DVD showcasing his talents.
After the digeridoo performance we spent some time looking around the shop, did a tour of all the metal sculptures dotted around the gardens, then parked under a nearby tree to have lunch.
Back on the road we drove to Tingha to check out the Wing Hing Long Museum. which started life as a general store.
During the peak of the mining boom between 1880 and 1920 a large community of Chinese miners established themselves in the district. This community sought Chinese goods, services and general supplies.
Wing Hing Long was established in the late nineteenth century as one of a number of stores servicing the tin mining communities of the district. Tin was first discovered in the early 1870s and saw a boom in population and productivity which peaked in the late nineteenth century and which slowly declined as the mining booms went bust.
In 1939 Jack Joe Lowe the owner moved to Tamworth where he and his youngest son, Verdon, established a business of the same name. The store in Tingha remained in family ownership. After the Second World War, Jack Joe Lowe's daughter, Mavis Pratt, took over management and ultimately ownership of the store, and continued in that position until her retirement in early 1998.
Mavis built a house at the back of the shop, that is still standing today, and is part of the museum.
The weird thing with this museum is, apart from everything else you would expect to find in such a museum, all the stock on the shelves and in the storeroom remains as it was when the store stopped trading in 1996. A trip down memory lane!
We were fortunate to be given a guided tour of the whole shop and house by a very knowledgeable and friendly volunteer, who showed us all the nooks and crannies and told us stories of the shop's history.
A lot of goods originally purchased in the shop have been returned as museum pieces.
With all the interesting stuff done for the day we drove to our campsite for the night at the Ben Lomond Recreation Reserve. The roads were in good condition for a change, for the 40 km drive, and the only excitement we had was avoiding a good-sized Red-Bellied Black snake that was heading across the road and, instead of doing the sensible thing and carrying on across the road to avoid us, it decided to go back to the left-hand side of the road, which meant we had to swerve to avoid squishing it.
When we arrived at the large reserve we were the only ones there, but after a while four other campers turned up, but the reserve was so large we were a long way from each other.
We parked up under some trees and set up for the night.
After Meg researched if we could have a fire, I decided to prepare the fire pit for when the temperature started to drop, which it would because we were only about 20 km away from Guyra.
It started to cool down early, so we got the fire going well before dark and donned our warmer clothes.
After dinner we sat outside for a while star gazing and trying to keep warm, but eventually the cold drove us inside for the night.
Day 26 - Ben Lomond - Bundarra, NSW 26 February, 2023
We woke to a cool, damp morning that allowed us to sleep in a bit later than normal.
Once done with the morning routine we pulled out of camp and went next door the camp where there was a small cemetery to check out the graves that dated from the early 1900s to the present day.
On the way out of town we stopped at St Patrick's Catholic Church cemetery to see if they had a better class of grave than other common people, like Anglicans. The cemetery was very well kept, but I couldn't determine that the Doolies had better graves than the rest of us.
We had a very short driving day planned, of only about 90 km, ending up in Bundarra, so we took our time getting to the first stopping point of Guyra for some chores and touristing.
First stop in Guyra was the public dump point and fresh water fill point to dump our business and fill up with water.
Filling up with water at the pay station was a different experience for us. While I was emptying the toilet cassette Meg did battle with the water pay station, because the instructions weren't very clear and she had to wake it up first to do anything, then by the time she'd chosen the options she wanted, it would go back to sleep again. She finally figured it out and enabled the flow of water but unfortunately when she turned on the tap the water came out really fast, too fast for our little hose, and it ended up soaking Meg before she could turn down the flow.
Driving back into the main street we stopped outside the Burgess Garage car museum, paid the $2 entry fee and went inside for a look around. As car museums go, this one is quite small and has an eclectic assortment of vehicles, from a Vanguard wagon, to a Wolseley, a few Holdens, a 1970 GT Falcon, a 1928 Model A Ford, an MGB GT, as well as a few other vehicles and the usual assortment of auto-related memorabilia.
Walking back across the road we went into what was the old Arcadian Theatre, built in the 1920s, and which had been transformed into the Australian Poetry Hall of Fame.
The building was quite large, as it would be having been a theatre, but there weren't many spare spaces anywhere in there. Every room was filled second-hand goods, artwork and the poetry hall of fame itself, honouring Australian poets. It was a really unusual mix of items, that it was as much a second-hand shop as a gallery. After looking around the owner got us a coffee and pretty much told us his life story and how he came to own the old theatre.
That was all we planned to do for the day, except to drive to our chosen campsite, the Lions Park donation campground outside Bundarra.
After setting up we had lunch, then relaxed for the rest of the day and evening, catching up on our usuals.
Day 27 - Bundarra - Nundle, NSW 27 February, 2023
We had one of our longer driving days planned today, with a small number of stops along the way.
Leaving our campsite around 9:30 A.M. we drove about 50 km south east to the Yarrowyck Crossing Reserve, which is the start point of the 3 km Bulagaranda (Mt Yarrowyck) Cave Art Walk.
After donning shoes and hats we set out on the easy walk, through lightly forested areas and some more open areas, up a gentle grade to the cave. The rock art was not as impressive as some rock art we've seen, but it was still thought be about two hundred years old. Once we had the obligatory photos, it was back down the hill again to the car park.
Back in Mata it was back on the road for a short 25 km drive to Uralla, where we stopped to buy a few supplies, and to get a pie for lunch from the Pie Mechanic, which we'd visited a few weeks earlier and thought their pies were good. We were lucky to be early enough to get a couple of "Deer Hunter" pies, which were venison-based and very tasty.
Well fed and watered, we continued the drive towards Nundle, stopping at the Chaffey Dam Lookout, overlooking the dam that supplies Tamworth and Peel River area residents.
That was it for the touristy stuff for the day, and we drove the remaining 20 or so km to the night's campsite at the Swamp Creek Camp Area, beside the slow-flowing Peel River.
There were already a few other campers there, some of who were in the river panning for gold, but we managed to find a nice, grassy spot beside the river.
After we'd been there a couple of hours a fellow camper pointed out the storm that was approaching from the west, so we kept and eye on that and formulated a plan should it eventuate.
Around 5:30 P.M. the rain started, not heavy, but enough to make us stow everything under cover or inside, including us. It didn't last long, and the wind stayed light, so we could've stayed outside as it turned out.
The sun came out again, but there was the possibility of more rain in the next few hours, so we decided to cut our losses and stay inside for the night.
Day 28 - Nundle - Werris Creek, NSW 28 February, 2023
For no apparent reason, we left camp by 8:30 A.M. this morning, earlier than usual, and drove up to the Hanging Rock Lookout, for our first adventure of the day.
The last part of the drive up to the lookout was on a very steep winding road so we were pleased that there were no other vehicles around on that stretch. The view down to Nundle and around the surrounding areas was worth the drive on a beautiful clear morning.
Driving back down to the first junction we stopped at the Hanging Rock Cemetery, first surveyed in 1869, which contained a few actual graves, and some memorials of others who had died around the Hanging Rock area since the area was first populated by Europeans. One of the graves in the cemetery was that of Mary Ashton, wife of circus founder James Ashton, who died in childbirth at the age of 19.
Next up we drove into Nundle, where we planned to do a tour of the woollen mill at 11:00 A.M. and, because we had an hour to kill we went out to the Nundle Cemetery to check out the grave of Mr & Mrs Sipple, ancestors of Helen's father.
Back in Nundle we had a coffee and sticky bun in a cafe close to the woollen mill, then because we were still to early for the tour, we wandered into the mill anyway to check it out in case we didn't need to do a tour. Just looking around the products they had for sale was amazing, with everything woollen you could possibly want and more. Just the range of knitting wool in hundreds of different colours was incredible. We eventually found our way to a viewing platform above the workings of the mill, where we read about the history and process for turning sheep's wool into useable products.
We were lucky enough to see a lady operating one of the machines for a while and, when she was finished, and had turned the machine off, was kind enough to explain what she was doing and answer our questions.
After looking around some more we decided we didn't need to do the tour, so jumped back in Mata and drove to Wallabadah.
In Wallabadah, there is a very interesting outdoor memorial for the first and second fleets.
The memorial lists every known person, convicts, sailors, settlers and their families, who sailed from England to Australia on the first and second fleet ships. Every known name is listed on a large board near the entrance, and they are also carved into stone memorials, organised by the ship that they sailed on.
We managed to find the name of Mark's 5X great grandmother, who arrived as a convict with the first fleet.
Other boards provided information such as the provisions each ship carried and the length of the sentence for each convict.
Next up was a lunch stop at Quirindi. The first pub we tried was short-staffed and not doing lunches, but our second choice of the Zest cafe in the main street was open for business.
The lunch was nice but, like most country towns, the meal size was huge. Meg could only eat half of her meal, and while I did eat all of mine, I regretted that for the rest of the day.
On the way out of Quirindi we stopped briefly to take a snap of their silo art, then drove the final 20 km for the day to the Werris Creek, where we stopped at the railway station museum before heading to our camp.
The station building was a lovely old building in its own right, with a lot history and the museum was extremely comprehensive, with information and artefacts from the late 1800s up until the present day. It was well worth the $5 entry fee and the volunteers staffing the museum were very friendly and knowledgeable.
From the station it was only a few hundred metres to the Werris Creek Oval free campground, where we quickly got set up for the night and relaxed for the rest of the day.
Day 29 - Werris Creek - Gunnedah, NSW 01 March, 2023
With most of the touristing possibilities exhausted in northern NSW all we had to do today was to drive the 70 km back to Gunnedah to spend the night and be at Oak Tree for the NBN installation the following morning.
We arrived in Gunnedah before 10:00 A.M. and popped in to see Helen, to deliver the office chair to her that we'd picked up off the side of the road outside the Nundle primary school the day before, and to make sure she was ok before we went to the campground for the day.
On the way to the campground, the same one we'd stayed at the week before, we went to the hardware shop for a couple of things and filled up with diesel.
We were checked in and set up for the night by 11:00 A.M., so had the rest of the day to do some washing and relax.
The temperature was in the mid-30s again, so we were pleased to have the swimming pool next to our campsite.
Day 30 - Gunnedah - Bellata, NSW 02 March, 2023
Our only missions for the day were to get the internet up and running at Helen's new place and, if time allowed, drive as far towards home as we could comfortably manage.
We were packed up and at Helen's place by 8:30 A.M, but waited until 10:30 A.M for the NBN installer to arrive. We were just finishing off our lunch when the installer completed the job and explained to me what needed to go where.
Amazingly, all I had to do was plug in one ethernet cable in the garage and turn the router on to get everything webified, apart from the new TV, which needed to have its network settings configured.
Once all the devices were connected, and checking that the home phone was working, we got ready to hit the road.
One last job we had to do was to load Mata up with as many packing boxes, and as much wrapping material, as possible to deliver to Liz and Mark for their house move in a few months time.
With that done and our goodbyes said we headed out of Gunnedah towards Moree and Goondiwindi.
We were quite tired from everything we'd been doing over the last month, and didn't feel like driving too far, so we stopped at the Bellata Golf Club free camp around 3:30 P.M., nearly 150 km from Gunnedah.
The campground was actually on the golf course, although we managed to find a site back a little from the fairways, thinking some hardy person might tee up for a round at 6:00 A.M. the next morning.
When we were set up we wandered over to the golf club bar when it opened at 4:00 P.M. and had a beer as our way of contributing for the free camp, which also included free toilets and a hot shower.
We chilled for the rest of the night, enjoying the amazing sunset.
Day 31 - Bellata - Scarborough, NSW 03 March, 2023
We were on the road by 8:00 A.M. today, conscious that we had over 600 km to drive, and not wanting to arrive back in Brisbane too late and have to fight the Friday afternoon traffic.
Also, we had to go back through Morayfield to deliver the packing stuff to Liz and Mark, which extended our journey a little.
We stopped for a leg stretch and snack in Goondiwindi, then didn't stop again until lunchtime at a cafe on the outskirts of Toowoomba.
The rest of the drive to Morayfield was on country roads, via Esk and Kilcoy.
Once we had the packing boxes unloaded we set out on our last leg of a month-long trip and, having ignored the SAT-NAV directions, got caught up in standstill traffic on New Settlement Road which, after sitting immobile for about 15 minutes we joined others in doing a U-turn and finding an alternative route home, fighting school traffic all the way.
After driving over 3,700 km, and having lots of adventures, we arrived home about 4:00 P.M., and started the big unload.
Trip Summary
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