Sweet Wayfaring

Well not exactly home but on very familiar turf and getting closer to home.  This is Mudgee where the vineyards were still winter bare. That's the end of this trip.  Not sure how long it will be before the next one.

We pass through the lush Liverpool Plains farming country before turning to Mudgee and how.

Royal Hotel Boggabri Royal Hotel Tambar Springs We went via Boggabri so I could pick up the Royal, the one a Tambar Springs was a surprise. Four Royals on this trip, not bad at all.

It's goodbye to this lovely spot and onto our journey home via a different route to pick up a couple of new Royals which I will show you tomorrow.

Isn't this magical!  Down below in the creek bed there are tumble down organ pipes and markings on the creek bed where other pipes have been worn down by glaciers or something.  I didn't know this place existed and am enchanted by it.

Doing a bit of flower spotting on the walk out to the Sawn Rocks.

Those mountains are Mount Kaputar National Park.  We are on our way out there, passing by canola fields, to see what the Sawn Rocks are all about.

It's nearly spring and some of the wildflowers are doing their thing.  We were not towing the van so I could ask the driver to stop to let me take closer look.  I was surprised to find the fields of white flowers were paper daisies.

In the morning we went out to see the radio telescope 20 or so kms out of town.  On another wayfaring trip  we visited the radio telescope at Parkes  but this one is an array of dishes on a long track that can act like one big dish. 

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.

The rather nice cotton town of Wee Waa was an essential stop, not just because it has a name that just makes me want to see it.  I knew it had a Royal Hotel … but it looks rather shut. Cream buns at the local bakery with Queensland style mock cream instead of fresh cream which is usually used in NSW … yum.

We are touring again and heading east.   I'm surprised at how the dry bushland gives way to big sky farming country.  We are entering grain and cotton growing areas.

No trip is complete without finding at least one big thing, so meet Stanley the emu.  He really is very big, that is a VW making up his body.  We are on our way back to Walgett then, to take a different road home,  onto Narrabri.

I spotted these emus on the pub at Hebel.  We saw quite a few real emus out in the paddocks and I have one more to show you tomorrow as we are leaving Lightning Ridge.

We decided to pop over the border to Queensland for a very brief visit to the tiny town of Hebel … not much more than a few houses,  a pub and general store where we had afternoon tea.

Up to road from Lightning Ridge towards the Queensland border is the near ghost town of Angledool.  The old town hall theatre and a church as some of the few buildings that remain of what was once quite a decent sized town.

This series of shots is simply to say that it was pleasantly warm and there has been quite recent rain.  I am sure it is a very different place in the fierce heat of summer.

Out at the end of the green car door tour there is a nice wide view of the surrounding countryside.   They say sunsets are good out here but we weren't keen on driving those crazy dirt roads at night after the sun has gone down.  Someone has built a maze out here too. ≈

Cute isn't it.  But it isn't real, it was a movie set apparently.  I wondered if the old caravan nearby was the trailer for the movie stars.

These days it is all specialist digging equipment rather than picks and shovels but the past is lying around all over the place.