Well after a nice week and a bit in Brisbane and Kaye arriving back from a week in Perth after spending time with Renae and the rest of the family it was on the road again and heading in a meandering way towards Canberra.
Our first stop for a couple of nights was at Warwick. This is a reasonable sized town a little bit inland from Brisbane and not to far from the NSW border. The caravan park we chose ended up quite close to the road and the noise was pretty constant all night. Most places seem to quieten down a bit at night but this one at Warwick had trucks going up and down the highway fairly constantly at nights.
We still managed to do some driving around the place and had a small look around though we really didn’t feel that we would probably come back and stay again. Nice town with good facilities but didn’t have any pulling power for us. It was lovely and green around the district and there was a nice river walk in the town which added something for us to look at.
From Warwick it was over the border and into NSW and Tenterfield. It felt a bit strange leaving Queensland as we have spent quite a bit of time there and really loved it. Hopefully we will be back next year sometime. Tenterfield was a very neat and well kept small town that really does try and make an effort to attract you. We picked a great caravan park called The Lodge which was very quiet and also very neat.
Tenterfield is in the New England/Northern Rivers area of NSW and is surrounded by a lot of National Parks. The town itself has lots of tree lined roads which add a special character to the town as you drive around. Tenterfield was also the town where Sir Henry Parkes delivered his historic Tenterfield Oration that had the catch cry of “One Nation One People” that set in motion our start to federation.
From Tenterfield we were going to go to Glen Innes but we had a change of mind and decided on a free camp not far out of Uralla at an old fossicking area. We ended up with a great little spot overlooking the bush and only a short walk from the river. The area was called the Wooldridge Recreation & Fossicking Reserve and we would definitely stay again if back this way.
From Uralla there are some great little drives that you can do around the district that passes by some spectacular countryside. It would be interesting to see how cold this area is in winter but the spring is very spectacular. One drive we did was from Uralla to Gostwyck that has a very cute little chapel, up to Armidale then back to Uralla. At this time of the year with it being so green you could have thought you were driving through the English countryside. I guess when the new arrivals first settled in the area and named it New England they tried to make it look like England as well.
We were also lucky enough to be in town when a local rodeo was on. They had a small enclosure at the back of one of the local hotels that was set up for rodeos. It was a great little set up that wasn’t to big so you were very close to the action which allowed the crowd to feel as though they were in the action as well. Most of the crowd were locals and we had a great night out.
Next up was a short 90km drive to Tamworth. We had decided on a weeks stay in Tamworth as we had a few things to do and also we were really just killing time till we got to Canberra. Tamworth, famous for its annual country music festival also has a lot of other attractions that it packs in during the year. Its quite a large inland city that is also close to some very small neat little villages that are well worth the drive around to look at. We drove to one called Nundle and save for one small letter change it could be a really uniquely named town. We were a week to early for the professional bull riders event coming to Tamworth but we felt we had just seen a great one in Uralla.
Tamworth like most larger inland cities in the east has a lot of museums to visit. After a while you do start to get a bit jaded with all the history side of things so we didn’t really do many while in Tamworth. The couple that we visited were the Wax Museum, PowerStation Museum and of course the Australian Country Music Hall of Fame. Somehow we did manage to fill in the whole week, it is surprising how after a while the days just seem to occupy themselves and time just disappears. One thing that is very noticeable when driving around this area is the amount of hills and mountains everywhere. You also notice this with your fuel consumption the most, especially with a caravan behind you.
Dunedoo was the next destination of our trip. This was a real small little town that we thought sounded like a different name and a must stop place. It is only a very small dot on the map and was quite good for a one night stop over. We went to the local pub for a meal and won a whopping $2.00 on Keno but it was god fun as well.
After the highlights of Dunedoo it was then down to Lithgow for a few days. We stayed just out of Lithgow at a free camp called Lake Wallace. This would have to be one of the best free camps we have stayed in so far. There were huge grassed areas as well as toilets and hot showers. They were a bit of a walk away from where we camped but you cant have everything for nothing.
Lithgow was quite a nice big town that is only a couple of hours from Sydney and on the edge of the Blue Mountains. Lithgow has a big industrial heritage and has a lot of interesting things on offer to see. It is also where the Lithgow arms Factory is and that was well worth a visit. The displays of both rifles and handguns were very impressive, especially the amount, quantity and styles of different handguns. One thing we did want to see was the Zig Zag Railway that the web site said was operational again after the bushfires but when we got there it was still closed. We did a great drive out to look at the Glow Worm Tunnel which was about 30 km’s from Lithgow and in an old railway tunnel. There were two different drives to get there and we chose the one with a 6 kilometre walk to get to it because apparently that was what I wanted. The walk was very interesting and the changes were very visual as you got higher up and went from bush into ferns.
This is probably one place that we would need to come back to a spend some more time at looking around the area. Lithgow would be a great place to base yourself at and see the area in more detail.
After Lithgow we headed for another small out town not far out from Canberra. We were catching up with Jade and the boys for a few nights free camping. We chose a small place called Gundaroo and you can camp around the oval on the grass. There is also hot showers and toilets for you to use as well. We arrived on the Thursday and were a bit amazed at how busy the place got at night. It seems all the locals and a few visitors come here to the hotels for a catch up. Not to be out done we all went to the local on Friday night just to join in. Great night out and the kids enjoyed it as well which was good.
We did a short drive on the Saturday to the Murrumbateman Markets which I thought were great as they were quite small and not too busy so both Declan and Lachlan were able to move around without too many people to get in their way.
So after surviving a few days away with Jade and the boys we packed up and all came to Canberra for a week before flying back to WA for Christmas. Really looking forward to coming home for a few weeks and it will be good to catch up with everyone again before coming back and carrying on with our travels.