Rain.
Rain, rain, rain. And more rain.
The rain started at about 3.00am – well, that’s when I woke up and heard it for the first time. I was lying there in bed – 3.00am – and thinking to myself, “I think I left two of the roof hatches open when I went to bed last night to allow some airflow. I wonder if the rain is getting in?”
It was, by the way. Not too bad, just a bit of a puddle on the floor of the bathroom. Nothing too serious.
The Bathurst Royale is on in Bathurst this weekend. It’s like the Royal Bathurst Show, but they call it the ”Bathurst Royale” to make it a bit more special, I assume.
My mother always said I was special too.
Last night we got new neighbours on site 14 at the Blayney Caravan Park. An old(er) English couple. He sort of reminded me of Brandon – or at least what Brandon will be like in another 20 years or so and retired from giving directions.
They are staying for three nights.
Me: “Are you here for the show?”
Old Brandon, beaming from ear to ear and as proud as punch: “No, we are just here for three nights. We’ve never hired one of these before. We thought we’d give it a try.”
More smiles.
“One of these” BTW is one of those delivery van/camper vans things. The ones that are not high enough to stand up in, have a micro-kitchen, no bathroom facilities and a bed. You either sit on the floor, sit on the bed (which is on the floor), or sit in the driver’s seat. Or you lie down. No room to swing a cat.
The only way to sit down and enjoy your surrounds is to put out a table and your comfy camping chairs on the grass, because you have no awning and nowhere else to sit.
Rewind to 3.00am and rain. And more rain.
I’ll bet he’s not smiling now. His chairs are wet and he’s stuck inside that camper van. And it’s raining.
I finally went back to sleep and eventually woke for good at about 7.30am. And it was still raining. And cold.
I thought to myself “this would be a great day for just filling the jacuzzi with steaming hot water and lighting the pot belly stove”.
Sadly, Percy didn’t come with either the jacuzzi or pot belly stove options 🙁
So I spent a few minutes practising gratitude instead: for my wonderful wife; for the fact that we are not stuck in a pokey campervan in the pouring rain; and for the fact that I didn’t die a hideous and premature death yesterday in a cablecar plunging hundreds, maybe thousands of feet into the valley below.
Up, shower, breakfast and then time to pack down the van ready to roll. As per the normal separation of duties, MBW does everything inside the van, and I do everything outside the van. Outside, where it is pouring rain.
I put on a Spotify playlist this morning called “Single Saturday Night” which is heavy on Country music, but we like it anyway. Here is a quick quiz:
Question: What do Country singers sing about?
Answer: Their horse, their dog, their tractor, their gal, and ….. RAIN!
Argh!
Poor Elsie looked a bit forlorn. I expect that Brandon will be in a mood today too.
I have to tell you that for some reason I have had a great deal of trouble spelling the name of the place where we have stayed the last couple of nights. I know that it is spelt correctly in the blog, but every time MBW proofs (and approves) the blog, she points out every occurrence where I have spelt Blayney as Brayley.
I have no idea why. Maybe I’m dyslexic, or maybe I really am as dumb as a box of rocks? Or maybe I’m just still thinking of Brandon.
We were packed and on the road by 9.00am. One of us was dry and warm and toasty and in a good mood, and the other one wasn’t.
We had considered going for a walk up and down the main street of Blayney to see the sights, but the rain convinced us to keep moving onwards towards Orange and then Parkes.
It wasn’t expected to be a long drive, but a preliminary check of the road conditions and we saw the words “minor flooding” enough times to make us nervous.
We drove through the very pretty historic Millthorpe without stopping, and onwards towards Orange.
We rolled into Orange just before 10.00am and the weather was … raining!
We did a couple of laps of the city and a couple of turn-arounds at roundabouts before we saw a “visitor information” sign and followed it to the inevitable caravan parking area. Parked Elsie and Percy, got out our umbrellas, and went for a wander.
In the rain.
I probably had never realised just how progressive Orange is as a town, but they have all of the top fashion shops there, big shopping centres … everything.
We pottered around for an hour or so and decided that we needed a hot caffeinated beverage, and found a Coffee Club. MBW made friends with a 99 year old lady who has lived around Orange all of her life, and her secret to a long live is “drinking coffee”. I’ll probably live to 200!
I think that Orange is one of those places that I’d like to stay a few days and explore some more, but not just now because the weather is cold and I’m still seeing flood warnings – so time to keep moving towards Parkes – home for the next 2 nights.
One thing that I will say though is that they take bad behaviour very, very seriously in Orange. Misbehaviour will not be tolerated!
The other thing that I need to say is that they seem to have some weird people in Orange. I mean, really weird. I’ll even go so far as to say that they have more than their fair share of weird people. Weird looking, weird acting, bad haircuts, dressed in weird clothes. Weird.
Maybe it’s the cold weather, or maybe it’s just evidence of why cousins should never marry … I have no idea but I’m not one to judge!
MBW got to choose the Spotify playlist today. As we were pulling out of Orange with our 2 coffees, she started the playlist and told me I had to guess what it was.
With the toilet light game not likely to identify a winner for another day or so, we have to do what we can to amuse ourselves and stay sane.
I didn’t recognise the first song (which turned out to be “The day the world stood still” by the Australian Boys Choir and featuring Tina Arena), but we were heading to Parkes, Parkes has a giant radio telescope, and they made a movie about it called “The Dish”, so I joined the dots and suggested the soundtrack from “The Dish”. Game over in 15 seconds!
Not as much fun as the toilet light game, but it has potential!
By the time we realised that we were only about an hour away from Parkes and hadn’t actually booked anywhere to stay for a couple of nights, we were in the middle of a black hole where there is no 5G, 4G, 3G … no Gs at all. No Gs means no internet, which means no Googling.
Which also means no ability to call ahead and book something.
We stopped briefly at the next small township called Manildra, which seems to be noteworthy for very little except an enormous flour mill that takes up most of the township.
We stopped, Googled, and made some calls ahead to Parkes.
The first two places we tried were fully booked. Well, that’s not entirely true it turns out – it is probably more accurate to say that they have space if you want to moor a boat, but the options for bringing a caravan into the caravan park and then successfully getting it back out again were very limited.
There was a third park on the WikiCamps app that didn’t get great reviews, but we tried it anyway. The guy who answered the phone (Peter) said “yep, we can sort something out” and encouraged us to come and have a look before we committed to staying there.
I mean, we weren’t buying the place, but he insisted so we told him we’d be there in an hour.
That hour turned into an adventure. Remember the flood warnings? Well, they turned into “water across the road” signs, and then water across the road.
Just a little bit to start with …
… but then the water got deeper and more across the road until we reached a point just outside Parkes that was being attended by two (I assume Council) workers advising drivers to either turn around or drive through carefully, according to the type of vehicle you were driving.
All I can say is that it’s lucky we were not in the Ferrari because we would never have got through!!
We arrived into Parkes at about 12.30 and went straight to the caravan park. We met Peter who came out, introduced himself and greeted us with a firm handshake. You don’t get that sort of country hospitality very often.
He walked us to our proposed site – it wasn’t ideal because it is quite small with no slab – but he gave it to us for $30/night on the ”senior’s rate” and guided us onto the spot.
By the time we got to Parkes the rain had gone, the sky was blue, and a gentle breeze was blowing. We hung out all of our wet towels on the clothesline with a reasonable possibility of getting them dry, for the first time in … forever.
The caravan park seems to be predominantly cabins and on-site vans, and seems to be a home-away-from-home for itinerant workers. As far as I can see there are only 2, maybe 3 caravan spaces for travellers like us.
Set up, connect everything, hot water on, legs down and we had lunch. Put on our new Akubras and got ready to go out exploring.
I notice that I am starting to look a bit untidy. Without the hat I also notice I am getting very grey – probably a result of that near-death experience at Scenic World yesterday.
I’d better sharpen myself up, or MBW will trade me in on a couple of 30 year olds 🙁
We headed out towards the Parkes Radio Telescope to have a look and get our bearings for tomorrow. We watched “The Dish” recently. It is a really good Australian movie and I’ll have to see it again now.
That was about it for the day. We did a quick trip up to the Memorial Hill Lookout to check out the views …
… and we went to Woolies to get some groceries (don’t ask) and home for an early dinner. There was a guy with a dual axle van hooked to his car in the Woolies carpark, and it looked like the suspension on one side had collapsed. The wheels on the passenger side of the van were pointing in different directions, and I imagine that will make it difficult to tow.
I imagine being broken down and immoveable like that will make it tricky for Sunday trading at Woolies too.
Tomorrow we head down to Forbes to do a self-guided tour of some of the shooting locations from the movie (“The Dish”) and look around the town. I’ve heard it is a very authentic and original historic township, and I’ve been wanting to see it for a while now.
Driving country roads is my happy place. Passing drivers with vans all wave, locals treat you like a local, and you get greeted personally with a handshake when you arrive at your location.
Only a piddling 197km or so today, but some of that was through water “up to the top of my gumboots” according to the guy just before Parkes.
It will be nice to go for a spin tomorrow without Percy on the back, and let the horses run free for a change.
Looking forward to another day in country NSW tomorrow.
Ciao
#RoadTripNSW2022
Very interesting. A great story teller. Glad the water over the road was passable .