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Narrabri


As we near Narrabri, mountains seem to pop out of the acres and acres of farmland.  The cotton fields are empty (apparently they are planted in September) and the canola is coming into flower.

We are surprised to find Narrabri is quite a large town.  I guess I was expecting it to be about the size of Gilgandra (4,000 people) but it has around 12,000.  This is another town on the Newell Highway which I passed through back in the old days and didn't notice.  It's on the Namoi River.

We are going to spend a day or so here.

Comments

  1. When I was in Year 6 (6th Class), I loved Social Studies. Each week we would get out our plastic template of NSW and trace a map on the blank page of our botany boo, (mega pages). Then the teacher, John Curran, would help us to place "things" on the map. One of the features we did was highways. Another was rivers. So much fun. Then we could label them by putting a fine-nib in our holder and using our precious (home bought) individual bottles of India Ink. When that was dry, we used a corner of a blotter, to load up a colour (me being a literalist always used green), and colouring our map by rubbing the blotter back'n'forth.

    Your post, using the words Namoi and Newell, brought this vividly to mind.

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    Replies
    1. We did that too -- in fact I found my old mapping book the other day when I was doing some spring cleaning. Namoi and Newell were not in mine, we were more focussed on Queensland rivers and the biggies that the explorers followed, Murray, Murrumbidgee, Darling etc. Me and India ink were not a good combo … you should see all the blotches. I'm thinking of doing a timeline of all of my school books one day, I have then from Grade 2 right thru to university - nothing from Grade 1 because we used slates. Crikey I found hand written Maths lecture notes from Uni (we laboriously copied down all the stuff the lecturer wrote on the blackboard unimaginable today) and it reads like hieroglyphics, I have no idea what it means any more!

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    2. Ahhh ... alas, all my exercise books have gone to their maker. We had very little at home, and as soon as school finished for the year, the boys and I would joyfully tear out all the unused pages for other projects. I have no ideas what happened to the school pages.

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  2. In case you were wondering: Denman, 1960.

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  3. Enjoy your stay in Narrabri. I hope you don't get hay fever from the lovely yellow canola if it is coming into flower at the moment! You may be in luck and a bit early. Just been browsing your recent posts. What an interesting trip you are having. Such character in those buildings. Makes me want to get out there.

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    Replies
    1. I get hay fever but have not noticed Canola making me sneeze, which is good because I love the sight of canola fields in flower.

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