Sweet Wayfaring

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.