2 Aussie Nomads – Page 11 – Geoff & Kerri's Travel Blog

May 12, 2024May 12, 2024

Day 4: Augathella – Dunblane (near Barcaldine)

Every good road trip needs a good theme song.

Normally my go-to road trip theme song is “On the road again”, by Willie Nelson. But I have used that one a few too many times already.

This is a long road trip, so maybe a long theme song. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”, or Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”. Or maybe Don McLean’s “American Pie”?

Without any consultation with MBW, I’ve decided that the theme song for this trip is Bobby McFerrin’s “Don’t worry, be happy”. Or perhaps the lesser known “Don’t HURRY, be happy”. We have all the time in the world, and only a few key (booked) places that dictate our direction and speed.

Last night we went to the rodeo. It was a fun night, but it got cold out under the stars. And then it got colder.

For some reason, I thought that the rodeo was starting around 2.00pm, and we would be home for dinner. As it turns out, we didn’t get back to town until around 9.00pm, and by then I needed coffee badly.

I would have done anything for a coffee at the rodeo, but that was one beverage that was simply not on offer.

So we got back to Percy around 9.00pm, and had a late coffee, then I did the blog.

One of the goals of this trip is to do things as cheaply as possible. That doesn’t mean that we are trying to be cheap or to cut corners, just that we are trying to live as cheaply as we can.

One of the ways that we can do that is by staying at showgrounds or public camping areas at little to no cost. Like the last two nights in Augathella (only $10/night).

But staying in public camping areas at little to no cost also means that we are generally off the grid – we have no connection to water or power and we just use water from our tanks and power from our batteries.

Like the last two nights in Augathella.

But being off the grid is a double-edged sword. No power or water hook-up means little to no cost, but it also means that we have no possible way of running a small electric space heater to warm up the van when it is cold.

And it was cold last night in Augathella. Very cold.

MBW put an extra blanket on the bed, had a hot shower (gas heated), and hopped into bed. I then disrobed ready for my hot shower and noticed that the fridge was flashing an error.

No gas available. The first gas bottle had run out of gas, and they have to be manually switched across from the empty one to the full one.

And that has to be done outside the van. Where it is cold. And I was already undressed.

Sigh 🙁

So I got dressed, went outside, switched the gas over, got the fridge and hot water going again, and started the process of my hot shower all over again.

If every road trip needs its own theme song, some days need their own theme song too. And today’s theme song would have been “Blue skies, smiling at me”, by Willie Nelson. Or perhaps Jimmy Cliff’s “I can see clearly now (the rain is gone)”.

It was a picture-perfect blue sky outback Queensland day. Clean air, birds singing, and a slight chill in the air.

Perfect.

Today we are heading towards Barcaldine (or Barcal-dine, if you are talking to Larry). Larry is yesterday’s news. I’m not explaining Larry again.

Dunblane to be precise. Dunblane Queensland, not Dunblane Scotland, just to be clear.

About a 3 hour trip north, through Tambo and Blackall.

We paid our $20 donation before departing Augathella, and we were rolling out the gates of the campsite around 9.00am.

The streets of Augathella were absolutely deserted. Not a person to be seen anywhere, and I had to wonder if the Apocalypse had occurred and I’d missed it because I wasn’t paying attention.

And then I remembered the rodeo. And the drinking. And I figured out where everybody was hiding this morning 🙂

The drive was nice. The road from Augathella to Barcaldine is another one we have driven before – not that I remember it specifically – but it is not a bad road. A bit bumpy in places where Elsie gets thrown to the left, and then to the right while Percy is being thrown the other way. So a few moments of brief but intense excitement where I wasn’t sure whether we would become airborne, or the ESC would kick in and we would come to a screeching stop.

But we made it through.

The road to Barcaldine is basically broken up into 3 x 1 hour sections. 1 hour to Tambo, another hour to Blackall, then a final hour to Barcaldine.

We stopped once briefly at a rest stop to empty out the grey water tank, and then kept going until we hit Tambo. Gave Elsie a big drink and then went in search of coffee.

Tambo is a pretty little township that is barely more than a main street with a pub, and not much is open on a Sunday morning. We did manage to find a little coffee shop and stopped to give ourselves a big drink and something to eat.

It had become quite overcast again and quite cold, so we put on jumpers and warm clothes.

It all feels a bit silly to have to slow down to 40km/h to drive through a little township, and then speed up to 110km/h again a few minutes later.

On our way out of Tambo, a couple of things became immediately obvious.

Firstly, the skies were clearing again and we had blue sky and fluffy white clouds.

And secondly, the roads were getting much better … except for when they were bad, and then they were very bad. I’m sure that you know what I mean, though.

I’ve said before that I am happy to puddle along at 95-100km/h, yet the roads were (generally) so smooth and good that every-so-often I would find myself doing 110-120km/h without realising it.

We pulled into Blackall around 12.30pm, noting that our check-in time for tonight’s (booked) stay is 2.00pm. We needed some groceries (salad stuff), so we stopped at the local IGA to get a couple of things.

The Blackall IGA is like stepping back in time. Each checkout had two people manning it – one to ring up your purchases, and one to pack them into a bag. And then if you needed help with your groceries, someone would carry them out to your car and load them for you.

I haven’t seen service like that since I was about 12 years old!

We only bought tomatos and a bag of salad, so we were able to cope with them ourselves, despite being retirees.

Blackall is another pretty little country town best known for … what? You will need to read to the end to find out!

The trip from Blackall to Barcaldine was uneventful, except for a turkey from Victoria towing a van who had a bad habit of slowing down to 80km/h every time there was oncoming traffic, and then speeding up to 110km/h when there wasn’t. That makes it very hard to overtake, especially when they hog the centre lane making it impossible to see what’s coming, and give you no clues if it is safe to overtake.

But I overtook him anyway and left him in my dust.

Turkey.

Tonight we are staying about 10km outside of Barcaldine at the Gretel Cattle Yards.

David (the owner) has 40,000 acres, and I reckon we have about 5,000 of them to ourselves … complete with a tub that is filled with hot artesian basin water. That’s where I will be sitting come sunset.

I’ll put up some pictures tomorrow, but for now this is a few pictures of the road in, and camp for the next couple of nights.

It’s an early blog today. I need to get that tub full of hot water.

Now for the answer to tonight’s quiz: What is Blackall known for?

Answer: The Black Stump. It was used as a geographical marker way back when, and colloquially anything west of that is “beyond the black stump”.

That’s where we are now.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

#VanLife

May 11, 2024May 14, 2024

Day 3: Augathella

Rain, rain, rain.

I didn’t think it rained much in these parts, but the heavens opened last night. Although I seem to recall reading recently that some of the roads we will be travelling have been closed due to flooding, so perhaps I should have paid more attention.

In any case, we woke this morning to discover Percy was surrounded by water. The view from inside looking out wasn’t promising.

But outside it was even worse. We were surrounded 🙁

I think I finished last night’s post by saying that the pub was in full swing. It all got a bit crazy around 10.00pm, with a woman screaming out something like “will you all just cut it out”, followed by cars revving, and then screaming up the road.

Another big Friday night at the Augathella pub.

Our Ying and Yang was a bit mixed up last night. Or perhaps we reverted to our traditional sleeping roles … MBW put her head on the pillow and was instantly making sleeping noises, while I tossed and turned for a couple of hours.

Despite me being awake and MBW being asleep, she reported to me this morning that the fun at the pub got even wilder around 1.00am, with more shouting, and engines revving, and cars screaming, and tyres squealing.

I’d obviously managed to fall asleep, because I missed all of that. Or maybe it was the earplugs that blocked out reality.

It turns out that I didn’t hear the rain either, but apparently it rained heavily during the evening. There was plenty of evidence of that when I woke.

Today was intended to be a quiet rest day in Augathella. We only had two things that we really needed to achieve today: getting milk because we were getting low, and getting coffee from the local cafe because … well, because we needed coffee and we are not connected to power, which makes the coffee machine kinda useless.

So that was it for the day. Coffee and milk.

We had a surprise FaceTime call with a couple of our favourite little people (Teddy and Lili), so that topped up our emotional tanks for the morning before we set off in search of coffee and milk.

The “Friendly Grocer” – staffed by not-so-friendly people, as it turns out – advertises that they are open “5.5 days/week”, so we had a working assumption that if we hadn’t purchased milk by 12.00 noon, we wouldn’t be purchasing milk any time soon.

So off we set.

We were also aware that the rodeo was on tonight, and the lady in the butcher said it was an easy walk to the rodeo place, just up the road. So we thought that it was worth an afternoon’s entertainment.

We successfully achieved the coffee and milk tasks, and headed back to Percy … only to be greeted by a male voice calling out “anybody home?”.

Meet Larry. Larry is a retiree (like us, it seems), who gets around in a triple axle van and he makes and sells caravan accessories like A-frame covers, clotheslines, spare wheel covers, and stickers for your van.

Larry went to great lengths to tell us that he has a ”lady friend” but she is away at the moment, and that he likes to meet up with other 40+ solo travellers for companionship.

To be honest, it all sounded a bit creepy to me and I felt like I was being groomed for something unpleasant, but maybe I imagined it. Although in retrospect, I think that Larry was pretty harmless.

Larry also gave us a status report on the rodeo. He’d ridden his bicycle over there this morning and that “he’s seen more action at a funeral”. Noting that this was only about 11.00am and the rodeo didn’t open until 12.00, and didn’t start until 2.00pm, that may have been a harsh assessment by Larry, but it certainly had me questioning whether a Saturday night rodeo was worth the $15 each (“cash only”) for the outing.

The funniest part of the whole experience though, was Larry’s inability to pronounce words correctly.

Every time he said rodeo, it came out as rode-ao (as in Rodeo Drive), and every time he said Barcaldine, it came out as Barcal-dine (rather than Barc-aldine).

You had to be there. But I thought it was funny.

So the afternoon was just another happy retiree experience: having lunch, reading our books, having a nap, and talking about bowel movements.

Or maybe I imagined the bowel movement conversation …?

So at about 1.30pm, we started the 15 minute trek to the rodeo. Which took us closer to 30 minutes. It seemed that the butcher lady lied to us.

We watched the peewee barrel races (I think that’s what they are called when you ride your horse around three barrels and back to the finish line), then the juniors, then the adults.

If you look closely in that top photo, you can see a second set of legs behind the horse’s front legs – that was mum holding the kid so she didn’t fall off.

And the girl in the second photo was more interested in waving at the officials than anything else.

As the contestants got older and more experienced, there was more speed, more excitement, more spectacular falls, and more swearing.

Like the lady whose horse decided that it didn’t want to play this silly barrel game, and just wanted to run full speed around the outside of all the barrels with the rider screaming “I can’t stop this $#*&ing horse …”. No points for that effort I’m sorry to say, but it gave us a giggle.

So that was the barrel races, and then we had a 30 minute break (that lasted 90 minutes) before the main event. If I heard the ringmaster say “we are not too far off starting now …” once, I heard it a thousand times.

The main event. Bull riding. Bronco riding. Bareback riding.

Danger. Excitement. Broken bones. Clowns. Injuries. Spectacular falls into the mud. Ambulances.

The main event was to be conducted in the main arena, so we grabbed ourselves a couple of steak burgers, and settled in for the night.

I’ve never been to a rodeo before, but at least now when I say “it’s not my first rodeo”, I can say it truthfully.

I’m really not sure how to describe the evening, except to point out a few of the things that stood out. There were flies. Lots and lots of flies. And I reckon I inhaled more passive cigarette smoke tonight than I have previously in my whole life. It seems that the usual rules of smoking don’t apply in Augathella.

The bar was the place to be, but there was no real surprises there, given our experience with the pub last night.

I also felt a little under-dressed, as I had neglected to pack my boots and spurs. I also neglected to pack a decent jumper, and the night grew steadily colder.

At some point in the evening, MBW suggested that I walk back to camp and get the car and some chairs. Fortunately the nice man at the ticket gate – once I had divulged my plans to him to walk back to town – stopped the very next vehicle heading out the gate and instructed “young Luke” to “drive this man back to town”. So I didn’t have to walk after all.

Thanks Luke (who used to live in town but now lives in Cunnamulla, and who had no working seatbelts in his car.)

I can also report that they love the Land Cruisers out here. At least we fit it there.

Anyhow, the rodeo was probably what I expected, and far more messy that you see on television. MBW kept up a running commentary that “it doesn’t happen like that on ’Heartland’”.

This is how it unfolded for one rider …

Yep, it was all a bit of a blur. No points scored, and probably no likelihood of him ever having children in the future. Maybe not walking without a limp, either.

I expect that there are going to be a number of people feeling sore and sorry tomorrow, if the number of people thrown from a horse or bull and hit the ground badly is any indication. And then there was the one or two that needed medical assistance.

And I expect that there will be an ever greater number of people nursing very sore heads in the morning too.

It’s a funny thing – at home I never have cash and never carry it, yet in Augathella cash is king. Cash for entry to the rodeo, cash for the steak burgers, cash for drinks.

No EFTPOS, just cash.

I’m going to have to go in search of an ATM, because I only have enough cash left for the $20 donation for camping in this park for two nights.

We are off to Dunblane (near Barcaldine) in the morning, for a couple of nights of something that promises to be spectacular. But that will be tomorrow’s news.

On the bright side, with the rodeo on tonight the pub is closed, so it will be a quiet night in town!

And ever better news is that I can see stars in the sky tonight. Not a cloud to be seen, so hopefully we will have a couple of nice sunny days ahead (as forecast), and everything will dry out.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

May 10, 2024May 14, 2024

Day 2: Wallumbilla – Augathella

MBW and I are like Ying and Yang.

One of us likes sultanas (bizzy-wizzies) in their breakfast cereal and raisin toast, the other doesn’t. One of us likes roller-coasters, and the other is always happy to stand and hold the bags.

One of us eats green peas, while the other doesn’t like them (… not that I ever get them because they are never served). Oops, sorry.

One of us sleeps well, and the other … well, you know how it goes.

History has taught me that while I will wake at 4.00am and say to myself, ”well, only two hours to the alarm .. I’ll never get back to sleep now” (glass half empty), MBW will wake at 5.55am and say ”beauty, another 5 minutes” (glass half full), and go back to sleep.

Seriously, MBW could sleep standing up in a hurricane.

But not last night.

Last night we stayed at the Wallumbilla (population 191) Showgrounds. $10 donation for water and power hook-up, remember? A bargain.

Turns out it was also close to the highway. Close enough that you could throw a rock and hit passing trucks. And that would have been like shooting fish in a barrel, because the trucks heading towards Brisbane were all frantically applying their compression/engine brakes to slow down as they are coming into the 60km/h zone into Wallumbilla. All night.

All. Night. Long.

But here is the funny thing. The one of us that doesn’t sleep well (me) put my head on the pillow and was off in the land of nod instantly and slept solidly for 8 hours or more, while MBW tossed and turned all night. I could speculate on the reasons for that – unconfessed sin, for example – but that would not be helpful or productive, so I won’t go there.

So I had a restful sleep, and MBW listened to trucks. (And me snoring, if you can believe everything that she says).

We were up, showered, fed, caffeinated, and rolling out the gate of the showgrounds before 9.00am, headed west again towards Augathella (population 328), home for the next couple of nights.

First stop for the day was Roma, to see the Pope. Kidding! The Pope lives in Rome, which is an entirely different place to Roma. A bit further North, and West I think …

We topped up Elsie’s tanks – just to take away any risk of running out of fuel in the middle of nowhere – and then went in search of Coles. Coles have a couple of specials on sale this week that we wanted to get.

Turns out that there is no Coles in Roma. The Project Manager in me really should have checked that before we left civilisation, so we took a detour to Woolworths instead to pick up some necessities.

Now, I know what you are thinking. We’ve only been on the road for less than 24 hours and you’d expect that it would have taken a little longer than that to run out of essentials … but alas, no. It actually didn’t take very long at all to discover that we had failed to pack any toilet paper. Not a single sheet of the stuff.

And I have to tell you, roughing it in the outback takes on a whole new perspective when you have no toilet paper!

So equipped with TP and a few other (slightly less urgent) essentials, we were back on the road, heading towards Mitchell.

Mitchell is a pretty little outback Queensland town where I would love to spend a week. It has artesian water swimming pools where you can soak those aches right out of your weary body, and it also has our favourite little outback supplies shop in the universe. Even better than Walmarts in the USA.

It had been predetermined that we would stop there, come hell or high water.

It is a rickerty old building with uneven wooden floors, and you can buy everything there. Well, maybe not everything, but it feels that way.

Cowboy/cowgirl clothes, boots, Crocs, Yeti drink coolers, hats (both Akubras and Stetsons), saddles and bridles, blankets, a gun safe, and stuff to kill intestinal worms in your livestock. Everything, I tell you!

MBW bought a nice pink checked shirt that I’m certain will appear in future photos, and it was also necessary because she’d forgotten to pack a decent shirt for the Opera in the Outback in Winton next week. Just like she forgot to pack toilet paper.

We were going to stop at the Mitchell bakery to get something for a snack, but we decided to keep moving towards Morven and stop at the coffee van that was parked at the side of the road last time we passed through Morven … maybe 2020? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that plan?

Prepare yourself for disappointment (and no caffeine) Geoffrey, because the coffee van wasn’t there this time. What a surprise! And given that Morven has a population of only 125 peeps, it’s hardly like there is a plethora of other coffee shop options there. Sigh.

So we kept plugging along towards Augathella.

The roads are pretty long, straight and boring and given that we have driven these roads before – not that I can specifically remember them – there was nothing of note that we wanted to see or do. We have previously driven some of this road, but we passed the turnoff to Charleville and drove the bit towards Augathella for the first time ever.

A bit of rain – heavy at times – but nothing of particular note to report. Not much traffic.

Although the strangest and most unlikely things can bring humour to your day. There has been quite a bit of roadwork going on along these roads, so I can only presume that it is an election year.

Sorry, that probably sounded like sarcasm 🙁

Google maps is a wonderful thing, because it alerts you to speed traps, congestion, and road works. Except when you don’t have any mobile coverage (which was my reality for most of the trip today), in which case you have to look for ”roadwork ahead” signs, just like in the olden days.

Anyhow, we have had several occasions where we have stopped at a red light – literally in the middle of nowhere – to wait for traffic coming the other way to pass, so that it is our turn.

We came to some roadworks somewhere between Wallumbilla and Morven (can’t remember where sorry … a lack of caffeine will do that to you), and there was a set of traffic lights (red, of course), with a traffic control lady standing there with a clicker to make the lights change colour.

Seriously? I can get Chat GPT to write a beautiful poem for MBW for her birthday, but they can’t get a set of remote traffic lights to change by themselves without a lady in PPE with a clicker?

But the lady with the clicker wasn’t the funniest part. When she clicked and gave us a green light to go, she then waved us onto the wrong (right) side of the road to travel a couple of kilometres, while there was absolutely no roadwork happening on the correct (left) side of the road.

I mean, seriously? There was no digging, no people working, no roadwork, no machinery. NOTHING! We drove a couple of kilometres on the wrong side of the road looking at nothing happening on the correct side of the road!

And when we got to the other end of the ”roadwork”, there was another lady in full PPE, with another clicker, waving us back onto the correct side of the road.

I had to wonder if we were on an episode of ”Candid Camera”. It was really weird.

I needed a stretch after driving for a few hours with no break for coffee (sigh), so we determined that we would stop at the very next rest area that we saw. It was only another couple of kilometres down the road but was rather unequipped and uninspiring, with only a drop toilet and a wheelie bin.

I stretched, emptied the bag of rubbish in the car at the nearest wheelie bin, but couldn’t bring/brace myself to use the drop toilet, so we kept on towards Augathella. It was only another 10km or so.

The next act of complete randomness was signage on the road to Augathella that tells you that playing trivia can help you to stay awake.

First roadside trivia question: “What is the mascot for the Augathella football team?” Answer: The Meatant.

Next trivia question: ”Why was there only one trivia question?” They obviously don’t know much trivia around here, because they only had one trivia question.

Or they only want you to stay focussed for a very short time. Who knows?

Augathella (population 328) is another pretty little town in western Queensland. We have found a little public camping area that is $10/night donation for no power or water. Not quite the bargain that we got in Wallumbilla, but it is also not next to the highway.

There is not much to see in Augathella, but we heard that the local butcher is worth a look, so we did a wander up one side of the main street and back down the other.

We stopped at the local BoQ branch/Centrelink office and had a look at their gallery of black and white historical photos, but we had an attack of the guilts because we didn’t have any cash to make a gold coin donation.

As I said earlier, we are camped in the local park and didn’t even bother to unhook Elsie again, even though we are here for a couple of nights.

We stopped at the butcher to buy some steak and got a big lump of 1 inch thick porterhouse (to share, sadly) for dinner, and then went back for a nap (me) and for MBW to read her book for a while.

I ducked across the road to the pub to get a ”minimum chips” ($5) to have with our steak and salad was rewarded with a beautiful rainbow while I was waiting.

Dinner, blog and I am ready for coffee. I’m going to have to get out the generator and get some emergency power going for the coffee machine to work.

It turns out that the Augathella rodeo is on in town tomorrow (who would’ve known? Maybe that’s why there are so many vans here?), so that sounds like a bit of fun. I don’t expect that MBW will let me have a go riding a bull, even though I have the appropriate hat to wear.

One thing is for sure though – if we go to the butcher again tomorrow I’ll be avoiding the mince meat, because you never know what (or who) could be in it after a day of unsuccessful bull riders getting thrown off a bull and trampled.

Time for coffee. I can hear the locals across the road at the pub and I’m thinking of Lee Kernaghan’s ”Boys from the Bush”. I’m hoping that they won’t be at it for too long.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

May 9, 2024May 14, 2024

Day 1: Home – Wallumbilla

We have a poster on our wall at home that says that ”… the journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.”

Very profound.

This journey – the Retirement 2024 trip – started some time ago. Specifically it started on 31 October 2023 when I clicked the cessation button on our HR system and said ”I’m outta here on 03 May 2024”.

You’d think that 31 October 2023 to 03 May 2024 would be a lifetime, yet it came around in a flash, and I was being farewelled from QR.

The plan was that we would be hooking up the van and heading off into the sunset (literally, heading west) on Wednesday 08 May 2024 for a loosely arranged trip with some specific bookings for things that we wanted to see and do on the way.

The first issue was that we needed to get the van serviced, and the only day that we could get it done was – you guessed it – Wednesday 08 May 2024. So we deferred our departure for a day to leave on Thursday 09 May 2024.

And then MBW came down with a nasty vomiting bug on the Tuesday night. Honestly I’ve never seen someone be that sick for a very long time. So there was some doubt about when we would finally leave. Or whether MBW would survive.

I didn’t see MBW all day Wednesday, but the retching and vomiting noises confirmed that she was still alive. She had a day in bed sleeping (and vomiting, as noted previously).

I was so tired last night that I slept the sleep of the dead, and I woke at around 7.00am to find myself alone in the bed. Where, oh where, could MBW be?

She was in the bathroom, showered, fresh and (mostly) ready for the day. MBW is alive!

We did all of the last minute packing so that we could get away at a reasonable time. And when I say ”last minute packing”, what I actually mean is that we started putting out some clothes to suit a variety of possible weather conditions and temperatures. While this trip will take us to Winton, Darwin, Cairns and back home again, at least we won’t be living in a third world country where we can’t buy necessities that we forgot to take.

Like chocolate.

Anyhow, MBW went out for a quick haircut and we were packed and ready to hit the road by 11.00am. A bit later that I would’ve liked to be leaving, but at least we were going on (almost) the day we’d planned to leave, and the likelihood of someone vomiting in the car was mostly mitigated.

We left home and headed towards Toowoomba and beyond. I always feel that there are a few things that truly make me feel like I am on my way into Western Queensland:

You get off the Toowoomba bypass road and there are open fields all around you
There are lots of trucks on the road
You see your first B-Triple just before Dalby
The chatter on the CB radio Channel 40 goes from X-rated to helpful and interesting
You stop to stretch your legs and all you can smell is the smell of cattle (and cattle poop) in the air
You get past Chinchilla and the roads turn to 110km/h. Not me though … this responsible, retired grey nomad travels at a safe 95-100km/h.

We have done this road several times already, so really not much new or exciting to tell. Same old, same old.

Other than stopping for a cuppa in Dalby, the only real highlight of the trip was stopping briefly in Drillham (population 126) to post a letter. It will be interesting to see if that ever reaches its destination because it looked like that post box hadn’t been used for a loooong time.

Tonight’s stop is at the Wallumbilla Sale Yards/Showgrounds. Drive in, don’t even unhook, power and water hookup for a $10 donation. How good is that?

No pictures yet because we arrived just after 5.30pm and it was getting dark.

I had thought about going over to the shower block for a hot shower tonight, but the mossies are so big, and so fierce that I’m afraid to go outside the van for fear of being carried away. It will be a quick shower in the van tonight, and I will have a decent ablution in the morning.

But now I need coffee.

Ciao

#Retirement2024

July 10, 2023July 10, 2023

Day 15: Stanthorpe > Warwick > Home

“Take me home, country roads”

That’s what John Denver sang … just before he died from massive multiple blunt force trauma in a fatal (plane) crash after his vehicle ran out of fuel.

Our only goal for the day was to achieve the first bit of that story (getting home), while avoiding the second bit (multiple blunt force trauma). Although JD’s plane running out of fuel and Elsie running out of fuel are two quite different scenarios.

It goes without saying that Stanthorpe in the middle of winter is going to be cold, but it wasn’t as bad as I expected. When the sun is shining and you are in Queensland, everything just feels warmer. Seriously!

And the fact that the sun had risen over the yardarm some hours earlier probably took the edge off the cold too.

There didn’t appear to be any particular set of rules associated with departure time at the Top of the Town Tourist Park (aka TotTTP), but 10.00am is a reasonable time to pull up stumps and set sail. Sorry about the mixed metaphors.

The nice lady in the office told us that the markets were on at the showgrounds this morning. The more observant of you will realise that they were the very same showgrounds that we were supposed to stay at last night, but the caretakers had to go away.

No time for campers, but all of the time in the world for markets.

And MBW does like markets.

Ironically, the showgrounds were next door to the TotTTP, so it was only a short hobble (for MBW) and we were there in a jiffy.

No charge for entry. We have been there to these markets once before on our last trip to Warwick and Stanthorpe in the middle of COVID, and the experience – from memory – was underwhelming. And that wasn’t COVID’s fault.

It turns out that – for once – my memory was correct. Underwhelming again. We had a poke around, looked at some overpriced handcrafts, and were walking back out the door about 10 minutes later.

Let’s play a quick game of ”Where’s ~~Wally~~ MBW?” Can you spot her in the picture below?

Percy was all ready to go, but he just needed to be unplugged from the power and water and hooked up to Elsie. We were out of the park and on the road well before 10.00am.

Just look at those blue Queensland skies!!

While I have to say that travelling all over the countryside with Percy on the back is my happy place, the closer we get to ”civilisation” (and I use that term loosely), the more anxious I feel. Other drivers on the road are far less courteous and considerate, and I constantly feel at risk of being in a serious accident.

And having our trip end the same way as John Denver’s is not in my immediate forward planning just now.

There was one particular overtaking lane between Stanthorpe and Warwick where some moron in a poo-brown Tesla (which is probably all that you need to know about the guy to judge his decision-making ability) very nearly ran me off the road at just under 100km/h when I ran out of ”slow vehicle lane” and he just HAD to get past me.

Turkey.

The roads were pretty good, considering that we were on a major highway back to Brisbane, but I have to say that some of our national highways/roads are a national disgrace.

Uneven, potholes, patching on patching on patching, and rough. And with Percy on the back you feel every bump and bang a second time when the van hits it. Although they do have plenty of overtaking lanes so that the clueless and desperate can go roaring past you to get where they need to be.

To be fair, many of the other drivers on the road are pretty pragmatic and considerate. There is only a select few that just need a bit more chlorine in their gene pool.

Anyhow, we arrived safely in Warwick, saw a coffee shop and purchased take-away caffeinated beverages, and we were back on the road again.

Past a Hipcamp that we have stayed at previously near Maryvale (we must go back there some time), and over Cunningham’s Gap. Maryvale (population 303) is a delightful little township just off the highway with a cute little pub and the best pork ribs I’ve had in a long time … but that is a whole other story for another time.

It felt as though Percy was resisting me dragging him home. He just felt heavy and sluggish and I wondered more than once if I’d forgotten to release the handbrake before we left … yet we got the best fuel economy on that trip than we got on any other tank of fuel for the whole roadtrip – about 16.5 litres/100km average – despite going up and over Cunningham’s Gap.

Home not long after 1.00pm and unpacked.

Elsie and Percy are both so dirty that I don’t know whether to wash them or plant potatoes.

This is what today looks like.

All up, we (MBW, Elsie and Myself) did about 4,080km total. Percy didn’t do quite that many because we left him parked a few times and went on day trips.

OK, so here is the answer to the ”Where’s ~~Wally~~ MBW?” question.

Thanks for tagging along.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023

July 8, 2023May 9, 2024

Day 14: Moree > North Star > Texas > Stanthorpe

If I was a cheese, I wonder what sort of cheese I’d be?

Maybe something “rich, crumbly, and spicy” like a Pepper cheese? Certainly not rich though, not after all of the cheese we have bought.

Or maybe something “mature and full-bodied”? I’ll have to give that some more thought.

I’ve mentioned already that we stayed in the Moree Showgrounds last night. A beautiful spot – quiet, green, peaceful. If I’d had more time I’d have done the “pay 3, stay 5” special like all of the other lucky retirees. That would have given us more time to soak our weary bodies in the artesian waters, and go fossicking in the shops in town.

I probably don’t need to tell you that it was cold, but it was cold. 2 degrees that feels like -0.9 degrees. Cold enough to freeze the you-know-whats …

Now in case you think that we have an unnatural obsession with Op Shops, we don’t. We just enjoy poking around in little craft shops and Op Shops to see what bargains we can pick up. I particularly like looking for any autobiographies that are on the shelf, and you can get books so cheaply in Op Shops. $5.00 for 3 books is not uncommon … and it’s a bit of fun that also goes towards a good cause.

We woke to an absolutely stunning day today. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and all was good with the world.

Breakfast, showers, hooked up Percy, and we were on the road by just after 9.30am.

And what a road it was. Fast (110km/h), flat, smooth … everything that you could hope for on your penultimate day of travelling.

A tiger in the tank, all of the horses straining at the bit, MBW sitting up front with me. A bag of Minties to munch on, and coffee in my belly. A great day for a drive. And a great road for driving on.

We overtook a slow-moving road train and I found myself going more than 110km/h, but it all felt safe and secure.

The road we were travelling on takes you to Goondiwindi, and that’s not the way that we were going. We are heading to Stanthorpe, which is further east. It wasn’t long before – surprise, surprise – Dolly wanted us to do a right turn onto the highway to Stanthorpe.

Except it wasn’t a highway 🙁 It was another of those rough, bumpy back roads where you really don’t feel safe going faster than 80-90km/h for fear that you will rupture something internally, or you will be bounced off the road.

I’m pretty sure that I have put on a couple of kilograms during this trip, because it felt like there was an unnatural amount of shaking and jiggling and wobbling going on. I didn’t ask MBW if she felt the same way because … well, you don’t stay married for 38 years if you ask questions like that.

Certainly not a highway, but an OK back road so long as you keep your speed under control.

Until it wasn’t even that any more. It was worse.

Suddenly it was a wannabe road that was in desperate need of some good quality bitumen. I mean it was OK to travel on, so long as you slowed down just a bit more and took care not to get into a slide, and even more care not to shower Percy with stones.

Before long we came to a pretty little township called North Star (population “about 50”) and we had high hopes for a little coffee shop … that either didn’t exist, or we blinked and missed it.

And then? Yep you guessed it. Even the little bit of tar holding the potholes together disappeared and we were on a dirt road – albeit a relatively smooth, wide dirt road. We just had to slow down a little bit more.

And then, it barely qualified as a road. More like a track, or perhaps a driveway. Hmmm, maybe not even a driveway.

36km of dirt. 36km of not much fun. 50-60km/h tops, and if we happened to see something coming the other way – which we did a couple of times – we slowed to a crawl to figure out how we were going to pass each other.

Left turn, right turn, slow down for a rough surface, and then …. we finally saw it. Home.

The air was cleaner, the sky was bluer, the birds were chirpier, the cows were moo-ier, and the world was just a better place. A place where men are men, and we win the State of Origin.

Now to be fair, I had assumed that we we would hear a legion of angels singing as we entered into the Promised Land, but I think it was actually Kenny Rogers singing – for about the 20th time on this trip … “You gotta know when to hold them, know when to fold them, know when to walk away, and know when to run …” and “you picked a fine time to leave me Lucille …”

Over the Queensland border and we arrived in Texas, Queensland (population 790).

Texas is one of those places that I’d really like to explore some more, as it is a pretty little Queensland country town. And there is an AirBnB that I’ve got my eye on. I might surprise MBW with that one some day.

See the photo above? Definitely mature and full-bodied 🙂

The town’s coffee shop was closed, so we stopped at the little fast food shop promising “hot food” and “great coffee” and we purchased a couple of coffees that were … OK.

The roads from Texas to Stanthorpe were very different again to everything that we have experienced on this trip. Very hilly with lots of tight turns.

A slow trip. Not much other traffic on the roads, but lots of crawling up hills, winding around corners, and going over narrow bridges (hoping that nobody was coming the other way).

And constant reminders that there has been “15 accidents in the last 5 years, and counting”.

Staying tonight at the Top of the Town Caravan park. We were supposed to stay at the Stanthorpe showgrounds, but they called a couple of days ago to say that they (the people that manage the showgrounds) needed to go away for a few days and there was nobody available to manage caravan bookings … so we got a spot at the TotTCP instead.

And a very nice park it is too, with very friendly site managers. I’ll put some photos of the site up tomorrow. If I remember.

We set up Percy, and had a late lunch. Late lunches are becoming a bit of a habit for us. But that’s OK – when you are on holidays you can have breakfast for dinner, and lunch for breakfast if you want to … although we are pretty traditional. Breakfast, then lunch, then dinner.

Even if it means having lunch at 2.30pm because it is simply the next meal for the day.

After lunch, we went for a drive to Jamworks, a little place that we went to last time we were in Stanthorpe. Last time we were here, we stayed at Warwick in a HipCamp (someone’s back 40 acres) on a long weekend, and made a day trip into Stanthorpe.

The thing I particularly remember was that it was the middle of COVID and Jamworks only allowed a certain number of people in the store at the same time.

It was also in the middle of the great toilet paper crisis of 2020 – remember the toilet paper crisis?

So we asked Dolly to take us to Jamworks, only to find ourselves heading in exactly the opposite direction to where we thought we should be going.

But arrive at Jamworks we did, and … while it was Jamworks, it wasn’t the place that we were looking for. We were looking for the place that made and sold the cheese, not the place that made and sold the beautiful relishes that went with the cheese.

We did buy some relishes – Fig and Walnut, Apple and Walnut, Plum and Pecan.

It turns out that the place we were looking for – Stanthorpe Cheese – (the “Cheese” in the name is the giveaway) – was exactly where we expected it to be. So we did a quick dash to the other side of Stanthorpe arriving about 15 minutes before they closed, and did some cheese tasting.

And we bought more cheese. We do like cheese.

Back home to Percy for dinner of steak and salad and chips. We bought one of those handy dandy little air fryers for the van, and it did the chips to perfection. And I cooked the steak just the way we like it.

Tomorrow we pack it all down and make a final run for home, and back to reality.

There is a market here in Stanthorpe tomorrow (Sunday), and MBW does like markets. So we will see what time we wake and are packed to go. Elsie is already fuelled up.

That’s about it for today.

Coffee, Nelson DeMille and off to the land of nod.

This is what today looked like.

You can see the gross error in judgement that we made going to Jamworks instead of Stanthorpe Cheese … but hey, we got to both of them and made a small investment in both 🙂

Top of the Town > Jamworks > Stanthorpe Cheese > Top of the Town

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023

July 7, 2023July 7, 2023

Day 13: Coonabarabran > Narrabri > Moree

Today we are going to be answering one of the big questions of life: “Why is the sky blue?” I will address that question later.

Yesterday I mentioned the extensive list of rules that govern life here at the Getaway Caravan Park.

After getting MBW’s blessing to publish last night’s post, I went off to the showers. I was concerned that the small shower heads would not give a satisfying shower, but they were good. Well, they were OK.

Not as good as Mudgee showgrounds showers, but then I also didn’t need to wade through ankle deep mud to get back to Percy afterwards.

I probably broke the ”excessive water usage” rule, but I must say that I had a lovely long hot shower and eventually I was feeling relaxed, glowing pink and tingling all over.

I did have a moment of concern though because as I was luxuriating in shower stall #4, I thought I could hear a couple of females speaking close by, and I wondered if I might have gone into the ladies showers by mistake.

While I didn’t see anything in the rules specifically about males using the ladies showers, I did rationalise it by thinking that they shouldn’t need to spell out a rule like that. It should just be common sense.

And then I realised that they shouldn’t need to spell out a rule about defecating in the showers because THAT should be common sense, yet it made the list of rules. Maybe they have a greater problem with people defecating in the showers than they do of men using the ladies showers.

That is concerning.

But it was all good. It was just a couple of pre-pubescent boys whose voices hadn’t broken yet, so all was good with the world again. But I might just mention to the lady in the office that they should perhaps include a rule about weirdos and perverts using the wrong showers, just to be sure.

You never know what happens in these small towns where anyone and everyone can buy a copy of “50 shades of grey” in the local Op Shop.

So here are a couple of fun facts about Coonabarabran:

I mentioned yesterday that Coonabarabran has a population of 2537
Coonabarabran has a postcode of 2357. How weird is that?
If I’d kept reading about Coonabarabran in Wikipedia, I would have discovered that in the 2021 census, Coonabarabran has a population of 3477 … which obviously warrants their own Woolies. Sorry about that misunderstanding.

When we woke this morning it was cold and I have a recollection of it raining during the night, but one peek out the window and the sky was blue. And the sun was shining.

So back to today’s science question: why is the sky blue? Because it’s not raining any longer.

Blue skies, smiling at me – Coonabarabran

I decided to use the amenities block for my shower again. I was feeling reckless after breaking the “excessive water” rule last night and I was going to do it again. I had to use a different show stall this time because someone was in mine, and the experience wasn’t quite as satisfying as last night.

Breakfast, hooked up Percy and we were driving out of the park by 9.45am, being careful not to break the “out by 10.00am” rule. I was only prepared to be so reckless and didn’t want to push my luck.

MBW wanted to have a quick look at some Crystal Palace on the way out of town, but by the time we got there we just couldn’t be bothered. We are not really into crystals (the “healing” type, anyway), although MBW doesn’t mind the odd diamond … but those are not something in the budget for this trip.

The roads were much better today. Wide, fast(er) with a speed limit back to 110km/h, and much smoother that we have been experiencing lately.

While I will never do the speed limit with Percy on the back, the roads just felt so much safer honking along at 95-100km/h because it didn’t feel like we were about to be catapulted off the road after hitting a dip (or bump) too fast.

Fast, smooth roads – Coonabarabran > Narrabri

We got into Narrabri at around 11.30 and decided to stop for a caffeinated beverage. We found a little coffee shop, but unfortunately needed to park about 200m away because it seems that Narrabri is not a particularly RV friendly town … parking anywhere was tricky with Percy on the back.

The coffee shop that we stopped at served great coffee and lovely banana & walnut cake, but they must have also been the local Yeti dealer because they had everything Yeti.

We did a quick spin through town just to have a look around, and found an Op Shop so that we could continue our search for old-fashioned ice-cream scoops and/or Nelson DeMille novels … we purchased a few books and things that we didn’t really need, but nothing that we were specifically looking for. It’s all for a good cause, I guess.

The more observant amongst you will notice that Narrabri has gone for the “nose in” parking in their main street, which I think is a far better option. With “nose in”, if you see a space you just drive in.

With “rear in”, you don’t really see the space until you have passed it, so it is a bit concerning to be following someone who suddenly sees a parking space, stamps on their brakes and throws their car into reverse to back into the parking space. It is even more concerning when you need to pull up Percy in a hurry so that you don’t run up their clacker.

Anyhow, you will be relieved to know that Narrabri is “nose in”.

It was all pretty pedestrian after that.

We rolled into Moree at around 2.30pm and I asked the nice lady who looks after the Moree showgrounds if we could have something close to the amenities block, and she showed us to a lovely spot. She also said that she felt “sorry for the poor bugger with the broken foot” (MBW, that is). I’ll be sure to pass that on.

Moree showgrounds is a lovely spot, a very friendly lady who looks after the place, and no rules that I am specifically aware of.

We had a quick bite of lunch – yes, I know that 2.30pm is a bit late for lunch – and then headed off into town to find the Moree Artesian Aquatic Centre so that we could soak those aches right out of our bodies in glorious 39.5 degree artesian bore water.

MBW and I have been here (to Moree) once before for a roadtrip (I think it was a long weekend and we went for a drive). The thing I do remember is that it was very hot and we were outnumbered by flies by about 10,000,000 to 1.

We have also been to the artesian baths before and know that they can be very therapeutic. When we got there today and got into our swimmers, one of us discovered that they had failed to bring a towel, so we had to share. No judgement, no blame, but it just showed poor planning.

I did the “right thing” and allowed MBW to go first, so I got the soggy towel once I got out.

As I said, no judgement. Life is too short.

Last time we were here (at the Artesian baths) they had another pool open that is the “hot” pool – I seem to recall it was around 45 degrees. You can only stay in that pool for about 10 minutes before you feel light-headed, but it is wonderful. Unfortunately that pool was closed today.

We went for a quick spin around town, and got some groceries at Woolies (all very dull, I know, but we needed milk, yoghurt, cream, salad and coffee and we had to stop somewhere). Elsie also needed a drink so we fuelled up just to make sure that we had enough to get us to where we are going tomorrow.

We went for a drive down the main street of Moree just to have a look around, but at 4.30pm everything was closing. Maybe we will have another drive through town again tomorrow, on our way out.

Back to the showgrounds and I had a quick look at the 12 pin plug on the van because the fridge sometimes doesn’t work like it should when hooked to the car, and I thought that opening up the plug and oo-ing and ah-ing a bit might help.

I won’t know the answer to that problem until tomorrow, but I would be willing to make a bet that I either a) haven’t fixed anything or more likely b) made it worse by creating another problem.

A few last pictures of the showgrounds in the fading daylight …

You have probably noticed that we have stayed at showgrounds most of the time on this trip. We felt that it was good to support the local show associations rather than caravan parks, although there are a few observations that I’d like to make:

Showgrounds seem to be a great deal more casual in the way that they are run (where “casual” = poorly organised and managed in many cases). Some of the places we stayed – like here at Moree – are fabulous with great facilities
Staying at showgrounds means that the facilities are often not as good as you would expect at a caravan park, but then you pay for the privilege at a caravan park. Sometimes showgrounds have no facilities at all (other than power, which was a mandatory requirement due to the cold weather)
Costs at showgrounds are quite cheap. Here at Moree we paid $28 for one night with power and water, but they have a special where you can pay for 3 and stay 5 nights. And then you spend more money in town, so the town benefits.
Showgrounds have generally been very wet and muddy, while caravan parks tend to have more permanent infrastructure (roads and paths). Yes I know that it has been raining
In any case, if you use Wikicamps or Google Reviews, you can get the scoop on the places ahead of time and make an informed decision.

I’ve already done my research and found that the showers here at the showgrounds have big waterfall shower heads, so I will be sneaking over there after dinner for a long hot shower.

Tomorrow we are off to QUEENSLAND! Stanthorpe, to be exact. Tomorrow night will the last night of our trip as we will be home on Sunday. I’m feeling a bit sad about that and looking forward to retirement when we can take benefit of the specials, and be able to be a lot more flexible about where we are going and when.

But it’s not over until the fat lady sings, and she’s not singing yet.

Author’s note: OK, I confess. It was me that forgot to take a towel 🙁 But you probably figured that out a long time ago …

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023

July 6, 2023July 6, 2023

Day 12: Mudgee > Gulgong > Dunedoo > Mendooran > Coonabarabran

Shake, rattle, and roll. Another day battling NSW country roads.

To be fair, we have been through some really pretty little country townships, but the price of that is driving roads that are sub-optimal (at best), and that have rearranged all of my internal organs and plumbing (at worst).

I’ve had a bit of a whinge already about the Mudgee showgrounds, so I won’t complain any more about it. Sadly I forgot to take any photos of the place, but it was like every other showgrounds that we stayed at – muddy.

On the bright side, the showers were amazing, with nice big waterfall-style shower heads with heaps of scalding hot water. They also had free washing machines, so we were able to do a couple of loads of washing. I’m pretty sure that my jeans were starting to crackle when I wore them, so they were certainly due for a wash.

No dryers though, so first thing this morning we packed down everything in the van ready for our departure, and took our wet washing in search of a laundromat so that we could dry it.

There was one thing that I really wanted to do while we were here, and that was to visit an historic township called Hill End that was part of gold rush history, but unfortunately we just didn’t have the time. It would have added a couple of hours and a couple of hundred kilometres to the trip, and we just didn’t have it.

Besides, who wouldn’t rather go to a laundromat any day to dry your smalls that look at an historic township.

Clothes dry, and we went into Mudgee to have a poke around. ”Went into Mudgee” makes it sound like an adventure, but it was really only a couple of blocks from the laundromat. Nothing is far away in Mudgee.

Mudgee is another pretty little country town, although it is unusual in that they have reverse parking in the main streets, rather than front-in parking. Lots of beautiful old churches and architecture to be seen.

MBW and went our separate ways for a short time, while she looked at craft shops (yawn) and I just went for a wander. I was bailed up by a couple of dudes in PPE wanting to know where to find a good pie shop … they must have thought I was a local, and I assume I must have had a ”why can’t we win the State of Origin?” look of despair on my face.

I must make an effort to smile more often so that other people don’t make the same mistake 🙂

We bought a few odds and sods, then headed back to the showgrounds to hook up Percy and head off towards Coonabarabran.

We wanted to stop in Gulgong (population 2,521) for morning tea because a reliable source (yep, the same reliable source that we were supposed to have dinner with last night but he didn’t show …) told us that there is a fabulous bakery there.

Gulgong is only about 35km up the road from Mudgee, but we hadn’t even gone 5km and we stopped at the Honey Haven to check out their … honey.

MBW said ”here, try this” as she shoveled a spoonful of something into my mouth from the testers jars. It was beetroot chilli relish, but I think it only had chilli in it. It nearly too my head off. And I’m sure that will be fun when it has made it’s way through my digestive system.

Onwards to Gulgong. Gulgong is a pretty little 19th century gold rush town that considers itself ”RV Friendly”, except that their streets are way too narrow to comfortably tow a van through the township, and every cross street has a deep gutter across the intersection which makes navigating a bit of a challenge.

The challenge is not to scrape your tow hitch on the ground as you go through, and even more importantly not break your suspension as you tackle it at a very wide angle and the car and van are twisting in different directions on opposite sides of the gutter.

First world problems.

Some beautiful (although likely non-functional) buildings that just begged to have their photo taken.

We found the bakery and had a pie and a coffee and … it was OK. The reliable source must have been thinking of a different cafe, me thinks.

We needed to get some fuel for Elsie. Prices in Mudgee were 20+ cents/litre more expensive than in Gulgong, although goodness knows why. Probably an element of supply and demand, plus all of the mining-related vehicles in Mudgee means that they can ~~price gouge~~ get a better price.

So we had already decided to get fuel in Gulgong, but there were only three possible fuel stations and the decision came down to which one was easiest to navigate into and out of, with Percy on the back.

Out of Gulgong, we had a song in our hearts and a tiger in our tank, so what could possibly go wrong?

Tallawang (population 165). That’s what could go wrong.

Actually it wasn’t Tallawang that was the problem. It was Dolly. If we are going to have a blame conversation, then I blame Dolly.

We were hooting along at about 80km/h and Dolly casually announced “take a slight left onto Tucklan Road”. And then “…stay on Tucklan Road for the next 29km”.

Allow me to present Exhibit A: Tucklan Road …

As you can see, Tucklan Road is not the type of road that you particularly want to travel when you are towing a van. Dirt, rough, narrow … should I go on? I certainly didn’t want to go on Tucklan Road any longer than I needed.

Oh, and nowhere to turn around. We finally found a spot about a kilometre along where there was some space either side of the road, and we executed a beautiful 17 point turn so that we were facing back the way that we had come from.

Bad Dolly.

This is what the road was supposed to look like. I also realised that I hadn’t needed to use the wipers yet today. Hooray!

A brief stop in Dunedoo (population 1,021) to look at some silo art and take some snaps to prove that we were really there …

… and onwards towards tonight’s stop at Coonabarabran.

We made an unscheduled stop in Mendooran NSW (population 275). I say unscheduled because despite feeling like we had been thrown around on a roller coaster for the previous hour or so and just wanting to get to Coonabarabran, we made a bet with each other: if the next town had a coffee shop that scored better than 4.7 on Google reviews, and it was open, then we would stop and purchase a hot beverage.

If none of the above were true (or perhaps any of the above were not true) then we would go without.

So the pressure was on.

Now with a population on only 275, it is reasonable to expect that it is unlikely to have a McDonalds McCafe, or even a choice of coffee shops … but we didn’t see any that I can recall.

But we did see a little crafty shop advertising cheese, and we do like cheese.

So we stopped and bought some cheese plus some finger lime, salt and pepper rub (which went very nicely on our salmon tonight, I must say).

I’m sorry to say that’s about all of the excitement for today.

We arrived at the Gateway Caravan Park at Coonabarabran (population 2,537) around 3.30pm. Not the most friendly soul who checked us in, but they did lose the State of Origin. It’s a quiet caravan park on the south side of town, with an entrance that you go sailing past if you are not paying attention, and then have to do a few right turn, another right turn, etc to get back where you wanted to be.

Here is a fun fact: Coonabarabran has a population of only 16 people more than Gulgong. Gulgong has absolutely nothing of interest and it felt like we had stepped back in time, yet Coonabarabran has several caravan parks, a Woolies supermarket, and several Op Shops.

How is that fair?

Into town to find the local Woolies and buy a few things (milk, bananas, veges for our vege stack tonight, yawn, zzzzzzz) then back to Percy for the night.

An interesting set of rules and warnings at the caravan park where we are staying, including:

No pets in the cabins (penalty $300)
No smoking in cabins (penalty $300)
Tree limbs have a habit of falling, so park at your own risk (accompanied by graphic photos of caravans than now resemble pancakes)
No late checkouts – be gone by 10.00am or pay extra
No leaving the toilet block open
Parents are responsible for their children’s behaviour
Management reserves the right to charge you more money if you use excessive water or electricity
No washing your car or van in the park because water is too expensive
No noise
No wiping snot on the walls of the bathroom (seriously – that’s what it said!)
No bleeding on the floor of the toilet blocks (again, seriously!)
No defecating in the shower (I hope you are not eating dinner …)
Enjoy your stay (I’m not sure if that is a rule or just some pleasantness??)

I guess I’ll just have to find somewhere else to defecate.

I’ll take some pictures of the caravan park in the morning assuming a) I remember and b) I’m allowed to do so. I will need to check the extensive list of rules.

This is what today looked like. I hope that you are having as much fun as we are (even considering the restrictive defecation rules).

PS I just realised that we are at the Getaway Caravan Park, not the Gateway Caravan Park. There’s probably a rule for that too. I had all the right letters, just in the wrong order.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023

July 5, 2023July 5, 2023

Day 11: Cowra > Molong > Wellington > Mudgee

I’m not feeling particularly happy or charitable tonight. That’s the bad news.

The ESC is working perfectly. That’s the good news.

I’m getting tired of the rain. Not the rain, per se, but the effects of the rain. Cold, wet, difficult roads. You know how it is.

We stayed at the Cowra showgrounds last night. And when I say showgrounds, I don’t actually know where the showgrounds were, but we didn’t appear to be anywhere near them. When we asked Dolly for directions, she took us to the showgrounds entrance, several streets away.

The place we stayed was somewhere else entirely. And it was wet. And boggy. And muddy. And I have to say that they didn’t do themselves any favours, because there was nowhere for you to direct your grey water except to discharge it on the ground … which exacerbated the problem.

Being the righteous and thoughtful person that I am, I shut off the valve on our greywater tank and collected it all, for the greater good.

I had planned a long hot shower at the amenities block before retiring for the night, but I’d popped over earlier to use the facilities, and the showers were … uninspiring. I can’t really explain that, except to say that it wasn’t a place that I felt like taking myself for a shower, and being able to feel comfortable. I wouldn’t have been able to relax.

It was just one of those uninspiring places. Besides that, I wasn’t sure whether dog-paddle or breaststroke was the best way of getting back to Percy after my shower – figuring that I would only have ended up very muddy again in the process of navigating the vast expanse of water between the shower block and home.

So I elected to have a short, hot shower at the van.

We woke this morning in the usual way – by opening our eyes – and it was around 7.30am again. That is becoming a bit of a habit. One that I am going to have to break because I will be expected to be at work not long after 7.30 when the holiday is over and I am back to reality.

We really are creatures of habit. Showers, coffee, labneh on toast for MBW and muesli with yoghurt for me. Locked everything down, hooked up Percy and off we went.

Off to look at the Cowra Japanese Gardens.

So here is a fun fact. Cowra had a Japanese Prisoner of War facility back in the day. Seems like a funny place to have a PoW facility because it is a long way from anything, but I’ll have to do some research on that.

Anyhow, after the war, and after the bitterness and hatred had subsided (their words, not mine), Cowra formed some sort of alliance with their Japanese sister city and they ended up building a Japanese Garden.

A very pretty Japanese Garden, as it happens.

We rocked up to the venue at opening time – 9.00am – and were asked to choose from a selection of entry options. Adult, senior, child.

Seemed like a funny way to do it, but we live in a funny world. Given that we identify as seniors, we opted for the senior price and the young lady behind the counter didn’t even bat an eyelid. We asked if she needed to see our National Seniors cards and she declined the offer.

I couldn’t figure out whether that means that we look like seniors, or whether she couldn’t have given a rat’s armpit if I’d said we identified as cats.

Anyhow, $10 better in my pocket, I guess.

Despite the incessant rain, the gardens were beautiful. Sorry, I went a bit overboard on the photos 🙁

I wanted to ask if Mr Miyagi would be interested in popping around to our place to give our hedges a bit of a trim, but MBW thought that would be either a) racist or b) in poor taste. I just figured that it was proof that I really was old enough to have seen the original Karate Kid movie when it came out, as evidence of the senior discount.

C’est la vie.

After the gardens we headed off towards Mudgee. There are two ways to get from Cowra to Mudgee – the A41 via Bathurst or the A32 via Molong and Wellington.

We have been through Bathurst previously; in fact it was the last road trip if I remember correctly. So this time we went the other way. Kilometres and time are roughly the same.

But the A32 wasn’t a great road. It was really hard work with Elsie and Percy wanting to bounce in different directions, and another day of playing dodge the potholes.

I’m not saying that the other road was better, but I suspect that it probably was.

Lots of other drivers kept getting held up by some silly old fool towing a caravan at 20km/h below the speed limit, but I let them all pass when I could.

We stopped into Molong (population 1,674) for a coffee at a place that rated very highly on Google reviews. And it was a great coffee, with an equally great chocolate, chocolate chip muffin, plus a nice chat with the friendly chap and his wife who ran the place.

It really is worth a visit if you happen to find yourself in Molong NSW.

We did a quick walk around town in our endless (and fruitless) search through Op Shops for an old fashioned ice-cream scoop (I still don’t know what it is or what it looks like), or any further Nelson DeMilles.

What I DID notice in the Vinnies though was not lingerie, but a couple of copies of ”50 shades of grey” … and it just made me wonder what the ladies in the CWA would think of that if they knew about it.

Molong is a very pretty little town, like all pretty little towns. Old, historical buildings, and a main street wide enough to swing a full bullock team around in one clean turn.

Back to Elsie, and onwards towards our lunch stop at Wellington (population 4,077). A much more industrial little town complete with their own McDonalds and KFC.

A sandwich at the side of the road for lunch, and onwards, always onwards.

We had a few moments of sunshine that raised our hopes and our spirits, only to have them dashed again when it started raining again a moment later.

We passed possibly the largest solar farm in the world …

Roads were predictable and boring. Predictably boring. Boringly predictable. And rough. And just when you thought you were past the worst rough bits, a sign pops up and says “Caution: Rough surface” and they get even worse.

That’s when we knew that Percy’s ESC was working, when he locked on his brakes and I lost about 5 years of my life.

We finally arrived in Mudgee at the showgrounds around 3.00pm.

Even though they don’t take bookings, we called ahead and were told (after we asked for something close to the amenities block to save MBW a long hobble) that they had chosen powered site 22 for us.

They have 23 powered sites, numbering from 1 – closest to the amenities block – to 23 – furtherest away. And we had site 22. Figure that out for yourself.

And we needed a hose that was about 30m long to reach to the tap, and we needed a power cord about 30m long to reach to the power box. Probably 50m long if you wanted to run them both in a way that nobody else would a) drive over them or b) trip over them.

After a follow-up discussion with the camping coordinator, we were told we could move to “17 or 18 if that was more to our liking”. And it was closer to the amenities block. I’m not sure why that offer wasn’t made before. Another mystery.

But we still needed to pop out to Bunnings for hose fittings to join our hoses together, even with site 17.

It’s a lovely showground, but poorly organised, poorly managed, and their whole attitude just made me cranky. Crankier.

Oh and they didn’t give us the toilet code, because we hadn’t paid yet. Even though they were happy for us to pay in the morning. Go figure.

But it wasn’t just us apparently; it seems that they consistently didn’t give the shower block codes to anyone because the opening comment from anyone else in the camping area that you bumped into was ”excuse me … do you know the code to the toilet?”

And the stupid toilet light was on again, and I found myself stumbling around in the dark on the other side of the showgrounds trying to find the elusive dump point.

And it was dark. And muddy. And boggy. And dark. And it’s still raining. And it’s still a long walk to the amenities block, even though we are 5 sites closer than we were before.

Not. Happy. Jan.

Dinner out at the Lawson Hotel for a steak (me) and a Parmy (MBW). We were supposed to have dinner with our middle son who was working in the area up until a couple of days ago, but he has now gone back to somewhere else because that job is finished.

So MBW and I went by ourselves. And we had a lovely meal.

I had myself a long, hot shower in the amenities block to wash away the stress of the day and I’m sure – after a good night’s sleep – that I will be back to my usual cheery self.

It could be worse though. Queensland could have lost the State of Origin. We still have that!

This is what today looks like. Only about 240km, but it took us about 6 hours to achieve it.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023

July 4, 2023July 4, 2023

Day 10: Junee > Wagga Wagga > Junee > Cootamundra > Cowra

Let’s start today’s post with a sing-a-long, shall we?

The wipers on the bus go swish, swish, swish … all the way to Cowra.

Yep, it’s raining today. Just to be clear, it wasn’t ”better start building an ark” type of rain … just that constant light rain that makes everything wet. And boggy. And muddy. And complicated.

We woke to the sound of rain on the roof of Percy and you know what that means? It means that we are going to have to negotiate the small inland lake that is AKA the Junee Golf Club Camping area and carpark.

Our planning skills leave a little bit to be desired. We were told that the Wagga Wagga Art Gallery is worth seeing and so we wanted to have a look. But unfortunately today (Tuesday) is the first time that the Art Gallery opening times align with our availability.

Actually that is not strictly true. It has been open at other times, but that is where our planning has been lacking. We have never managed to be in the right place at the right time. But today is the day, even if it means that we need to retrace our steps just a little.

Now just to clarify an important point: we are not just some redneck Philistines that sing along to Country and Western Spotify playlists. We are educated and sophisticated people who appreciate the finer artistic exhibits in an art gallery.

I think.

For those of you who are geographically challenged, Wagga Wagga is south of Junee, but today we are heading to Cowra which is north of Junee. See the problem?

We did all of the usual stuff (ablutions, breakfast, coffee) and then we packed down Percy. Wound up the legs, latched the windows, and disconnected the water. Locked all of the things that needed locking. Stowed all of the things that needed stowing. Latched all of the things that needed latching. Put away all of the loose things that could become a missile under the wrong circumstances.

I’m sure you get the idea. Percy was ready to roll … when we get back from Wagga Wagga.

We left the Junee Golf Club to the sound that now epitomises the JGC – the sound of mud being flung off Elsie’s tyres and hitting the inside of the wheel arches as we drive down the road.

We did a quick run down to Wagga Wagga via the Olympic Highway (not the alternative route that Dolly likes sending us along), leaving by 9.00am so that we were in Wagga Wagga in time to get fuel and be at the art gallery ready for opening time at 10.00am.

Why get fuel in Wagga Wagga? At 25c/litre cheaper than anywhere else around where we are or where we are going, it was worth the extra stop. And because Elsie was thirsty. Very thirsty.

We parked in a 1 hour parking zone outside the art gallery and learned that there is both an art gallery and a glass gallery … hmmm … so we asked the nice young lady for advice: “With limited time, do we see the art gallery or glass gallery?”

The art gallery is achievable in one hour, and it was the recommended option.

So off we went.

The art gallery is a lot of paintings, sketches, old photographs and textured paper done by an aboriginal artist.

Interesting, but I’m not sure I really understand it. It didn’t speak to me. It didn’t move me.

We did a quick zip around and found ourselves in the glass gallery, so we had a look there too.

All very clever and interesting, and better than I could do. I’m not sure that I would be prepared to put any fruit into any of those glass bowls … but maybe they are not designed for fruit. What would I know, anyway?

It seems that we were able to see both the art gallery, and the glass gallery, AND make a comfort stop and be ready to head back to Junee by 10.35am. Did you see the two photos above of MBW standing next to one Art Gallery sign and me standing next to another? Did you see the timestamps? One was us going in, and the other us coming out.

And then I had an unpleasant realisation. Maybe we are redneck Philistines after all? Two exhibitions and a tinkle inside 35 minutes.

Absolutely no risk of getting a parking ticket for overstaying the 1 hour parking limit.

They have some very pretty grounds and gardens at the art gallery, which I imagine would be very nice lit up at night.

Back into Elsie and a quick drive through Wagga Wagga, and we were ready to head back to Junee to hook up Percy and get on our way.

Going out of Wagga Wagga we crossed the Murrumbidgee River – something I think I learned about in year 5 (1972?) but I’m sure that I have never seen.

Dolly insisted on taking us the ”alternative route” back to Junee in order to save a couple of minutes, so we played another round of ”dodge the potholes” and I think we did OK. No blown tyres and no damaged suspension, which is always a bonus.

Back to the Junee Golf Club to hook up Percy and be on our way to Cowra.

Hooked up and ready to roll towards Cowra

The road from Junee towards Cowra was wet and treacherous, making for a relatively unpleasant day of driving.

The more observant among you will have noticed that I forgot to put the towing mirrors onto Elsie before we left, and that thought only occurred to me about 15 minutes after we hit the road. Fortunately there was a rest stop at a cosy little place called Illabo (population 144, although I find that hard to believe because we didn’t see a single one of them …) and that problem was rectified.

It was tough going today. We seemed to spend the day hauling Percy up steep hills, yet that seems improbable because Cowra’s elevation is only 30m above Junee’s (310m Vs 280m).

We also saw a contender for NSW’s silliest name for a township: Wombat NSW (population 225, which makes sense. Who could say ”I like in Wombat” with a straight face?)

But it rained, and it rained, and then it rained some more.

Too much rain for the intermittent wipers, but not enough to declare an emergency. An emergency would mean we could justify pulling out the emergency Pringles from the centre console armrest.

Bugger 🙁

Enough rain that the roads were wet and slippery, and every passing truck showered us with spray. Mind you, we were throwing up plenty of spray of our own.

I’ve mentioned in previous posts the broken red Anderson plug that controls Percy’s ESC. I fixed it. I thought it was still broken, but it just needed a new fuse as well as a new plug.

Seeing that cheery green light (= ESC powered up and working) is a happy thought, but it’s a bit like life insurance. You need to have it, but you hope to never make a claim because … well, just because. Because something bad will have happened.

We got to a fuel stop/truck stop at Cootamundra and stopped for a bite of lunch and a hot caffeinated beverage, and we were on our way again …

… and really not much to say after that.

We got into the Cowra Showgrounds at around 3.00pm and it was still raining. Reviews on Wikicamps said that it is a bit boggy. Pfft. A “bit boggy” my eye.

This place makes the Junee Golf Club mudflats look like a desert.

We did a quick drive around town to get some milk and locate the Japanese Gardens, which we want to look at tomorrow, weather permitting. I did jump out of Elsie and get a picture of Cowra just in case the weather is worse tomorrow and Cowra disappears underwater, but the weatherman says rain easing. We will see about that.

Leftovers again tonight and it’s my favourite sweet dry curry that I made a couple of weeks ago and froze just for this trip. Yum.

It’s almost 5.30pm as I’m finishing this post. I’m listening to the rain falling (more heavily) on Percy’s roof. MBW is playing catch-up on MasterChef and I need to get back to my latest Nelson DeMille.

Shame I didn’t bring some goggles and a snorkel … I think I’m going to have to swim over to the amenities block for my nice long hot shower tonight.

Bugger again.

Still, it could be worse. I could be at work.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2023.