The trip up to Moree seemed to have a lot of up as we climbed north.
We lunched outside the visitor centre at Willow Tree before meeting the first of the visitor centre assistants. I had not met anyone like her for helpful selling of information and attractions on our chosen route. It would have been easy to get a month’s worth of activities to see and do in the next day! This trip I have found all the visitor centre staff extremely courteous and helpful.
Life is good. A guy called Darrell helped us get the van onto the site (I can hear a few Coromal club people chuckling here). Darrell later said “well that’s what neighbours do” and proceeded to give us the oil on a few spots on the road from Darwin to The Alice. By then it was dark so we settled for a roast pork dinner from the kiosk and had an early night. The annex was erected the next day without bother.
The next morning we finally worked out why brother Graham and his wife Pat hot foot it over to Moree a couple of times a year - the artesian baths at the Gwydir River Carapark! Baths at 35, 36, 37 and 39 degrees centigrade and you just have to walk from your van to the pool. If cooking is too much effort you can just order from the cafe in the park or the tavern down the street as our friends Brian and Di told us. Bit cool after the sunset and in the morning (and we then remember Canberra's -7!) but 19-21 during the day, although believe some rain may be on the way but not this week.
Why oh why do town councils zone caravan parks in the industrial areas? Are they trying to tell tourists they don’t want their money? - certainly succeeding. Remember that song 'Trains and boats and planes"? Don’t need a watch - commuter traffic (twin engine planes) at 20 feet at 8am, 8.15am and 8.45am, returning at 4.15pm, 4.30pm and 5.00pm. Trucks thunder down the Newell Highway continuously stopping briefly between about 10pm and 4am, just in time for the local forklift to start his 8 hour shift, spent mainly backing by the sound of it. The other amazing feature is the number of caravans heading north at the moment. Hello!!! Is anyone left down south? Where are all the Victorians - in Queensland or on the way!!! We better start booking.
Before we left Thornton in an 80 minute chat-room dialogue I finally got Deals Direct to acknowledge their advertisement was misleading and to arrange a cash refund on the Dream Book android - cheaper version of IPAD. So it went back! Robert lent us his IPAD for two weeks and I am about hooked. I always liked Apple products - what you see is what you get and it is not hard to find it either. So really the only decisions left are which one of the IPAD 2s to get, and how does one get “The Plan”?
Got the bike out Monday whilst Anne was doing the washing and after disabling the front brakes (cause of a recent tumble) took it for a burl. Then had to fix the puncture again. But this time I pulled the little thorn out of the tyre.
Monday was washing and soaking day. You can feel the waters doing you good... Happy Birthday Trish – glad we had the combined birthday parties for this year’s birthdays before we left.
Tuesday took at trip to WAA gorge in Mt Kaputar National Park about 86 km away. Only did the hike up to the Mill-Bullah Waterholes but probably that was educational enough as I finally understood the term and the process of nature’s plunge pools – interesting. We could see from the creek bed below the pools just how much rock and logs must have come down the gorge to carve out the pools. Anne drove back to town and I got to do the gate thing as the track runs through a range of public and private lands. We missed all the roos and wallabies – there are more varieties than I expected.
On the road to WAA Gorge - Mt WAA on left, Mt Kaputar on the right
Interesting Notice Board at the start of the walk to the plunge pools - Boomerang of Volcanic activity
Cook-up on Wednesday so we will not need to do major cooking for a week. We also checked out the cold weather gear – been watching the cold rising from the south. Also watching the birds. Anne spotted a blue faced honeyeater that I had only seen once before in Canowindra.
Thursday, the overnight temperature dropped to zero and only got to 13 or so. Even the hardy Europeans and Asians are leaving for further North. We looked into the local Op-shops and renewed our library of books and found a couple of music cassettes – car still plays them! The grilled fish and chips at the pub across from the police station was great at $10 a serve for lunch. Then we demolished the annex and packed up for an early start on Friday.
more photos for this post will be added when I download my camera some time next week
