This Adventurous Age

Adventures travelling and working around Australia.

Author Archives: wendyviney


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2002 Travels April 19

FRIDAY 19 APRIL     ASPLEY

It was mid-morning by the time we got going.

The caravan park lady very nicely lent me a street directory, after I’d gone to the Office to see if there was one I could look at.

We drove to the address I had for my friend, about ten minutes from the park. There were two numbers on the same letterbox, which was a bit confusing. After getting no answer from the place I thought was correct, I put a note under the door, giving our location and phone number.

We then drove to Stafford, to Kyocera solar panels. Very quickly found out that they import the panels, and do not make them, as J said they did! They do not fit or fix solar systems. The owner seemed pretty fed up with J – join the club! We told him what J had promised our system would do, and he just rolled his eyes! His young assistant showed us a calculation which indicated that, if everything was at its optimum, our system might just run the fridge. Only the fridge. In heat, forget it!

So we came away from there convinced we have paid several thousand dollars for a lemon – we had been had by a con man. We were certainly given the impression that this was common in the industry, with a whole lot of self-taught cowboys jumping on the solar power trend.

It was all most depressing. I was reluctant to start sending more good money after bad, though. They did give us the name of a mobile person who the Kyocera people thought was reasonably competent – and honest. Decided we had no option, really, but to get an opinion from him, at least.

The Stafford shopping centre and cinema complex was nearby and John decided that he wanted to go to the pictures. Maybe to forget reality for a little while?

The earliest film that looked tolerable was at 1.10pm, so we browsed the shops for a couple of hours and had donor kebabs for lunch. I put in a finished film for processing.

The film was “Gosford Park” – British, complex, but interesting and entertaining. I enjoyed it. John had gotten confused and thought we were seeing “Kate and Leopold”, so kept waiting for the plot to develop differently!

After the film, I bought some frozen fish for dinner.

I picked up my photos – nothing special, though the few from Leopardwood were alright.

John phoned the mobile solar man and arranged for him to come at 11am on Monday.

Tea was fish and fries.

Afterwards, I read some of a novel I’d borrowed from S, in Canberra. John computed.


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2002 Travels April 18

THURSDAY 18 APRIL   LAIDLEY TO ASPLEY   100kms

We talked for a while to a couple in a neighbouring van, who were originally from Victoria – they saw our number plates and made themselves known. They were an electrician and an ex-teacher. They were now permanently on the road and do fruit and vegie packing. They had been in Laidley for the vegetable harvest in the area, and were about to head to Bowen for the tomato season. They indicated that they made quite adequate money doing the packing. We found it an interesting insight into that way of life.

We set out for the suburbs of Brisbane.

I directed John around what was shown as a ring route on my map, to miss the city centre. It was not really a great ring route – there were lots of uphill starts at traffic lights and stop/start work. If we have to go back via Ipswich and Toowoomba I decided we would give the ring route a miss and go the long way round via the motorway and toll road and miss the hilly parts with the van on.

John felt the brakes were a bit soft. Maybe we’d worn them out yesterday, coming down the range?

We booked into the Aspley Acres Caravan Park. At $110.70 for the week, it was cheaper than the nearby Big 4 one, but did not have a pool, and there were lots of permanent residents. It was fairly noisy from the main road out the front, but adequate. There was a hypermart next door and I walked there for a paper and bread for lunch.

After setting up and having lunch, we walked around to the local bowls club. John booked in for a game on Saturday. He tried to pressure me into playing with the ladies, but I successfully resisted. It cost $7.50 to play, anyway, and I would prefer to conserve the money.

We went to the hypermart and I bought some silverside for John’s tea. He bought a Railway Tycoon computer game from ToysRUs. I made him buy some decent leather walking sandals – he had a big split under his foot, caused by wearing thongs. Back at the van, he realized that his glasses were missing and went back, eventually finding them in the shoe shop. He uses two sets of specs – one lot for normal getting about, and another lot for looking at anything close up – it is not unusual for him to mislay a set when swapping them around.

I phoned J, yet again, and explained where we were. At least he did answer his phone, this time. He gave us the name of the man in Brisbane who manufactures our solar panels. And that was the full extent of his assistance! With hindsight, I wished we’d kept a good chunk of the thousands we paid him, subject to satisfactory performance of the system he set up for us. We certainly would not be recommending him to any travellers who might ask about solar power installation – I doubt he fully realizes the power of word of mouth marketing! I will also let Trakmaster know what we think of his services, though I did get the impression recently that they were cool on him too.

It was too late today to get on to the solar panel man. John had a couple of phone calls with the people at Bushtracker. They were, understandably, very reluctant to have anything to do with a van that was not one of theirs, but did not say an outright no. But it looked like the panel man was the best avenue, for the moment.

Having booked in here for a week, I hoped we’d be able to do some tourist things, as well as get the power sorted.

We had pencilled in 6th May at the Sunshine Coast, in case Bushtracker would look at the van, but really did not think that would come off.

Phoned daughter to let her know our saga. One of her friends just died from an asthma attack, which rather put our woes into a different perspective.

Checked in with the house sitter. There appeared to be an issue with the home phone not going to message bank, so John would have to contact Telstra about that.

A friend from school and Uni days lives in Brisbane and I thought there would be a chance to meet up with her again, but could not find her number in the phone book.

Tea was Greek salad and coleslaw, with silverside too for John. The heat seems to have really diminished my appetite.

So – to sleep, with much background urban noise and the smell of the city, instead of the wonderful bush. This was not what we had in mind for this trip!

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2002 Travels April 17

WEDNESDAY 17 APRIL   ST GEORGE TO LAIDLEY   460kms

There had been no call from J by 9.40am, so I phoned him. He seemed taken aback, but admitted that we had a problem! Generous of him. He said that he would phone around and get back to us. Clearly, he’d not bothered to try to think of anything, up to this point.

I felt that I was being fobbed off.

He hadn’t phoned back when we left a 10.30am, having waited around for his return call.

Later, when we came into a town, there was a message on the phone, telling us to go to the RACQ in St George, to get the panel current measured. That was not much help to us by then.

At Westmar, John put 40 litres of fuel in, to see us through to a larger centre – 93cpl.

As we went east, the country became more fertile and crop lands appeared. We were into good looking country.

I’d bought some rolls in St George while we were waiting around, and we stopped by the road side near Moonie and had those for lunch.

We’d noted St George as worth a return visit and a stay of a couple of days to explore, at some future time. Dalby also looked interesting. Very much a farming centre town. There was really cheap fuel there, and we filled up – 78cpl.

John wanted to tackle the steep drive down the Range from Toowoomba today, rather than spend the night brooding about it. From our 98/99 stay in Toowoomba, we knew the gradient!

There was much cloud build up as we neared Toowoomba and it looked like a thunderstorm was brewing.

We negotiated our way through the late afternoon traffic in Toowoomba alright. John did the first part of the road down the range in normal gears – I think he had forgotten that he used low range gears on steep gradients, before! After about a kilometre, he pulled into a little parking area – the Truck brakes were smoking! He let them cool down for about ten minutes. Neither of us felt good about this venture, at this stage. We watched all the big trucks crawl down using their engine brakes, and wished we had one of those. Then John decided to use low range and we got down the rest of the range with minimal use of brakes.

John had thought we’d make Brisbane today, but it was later than he realized. We saw a sign to a caravan park at Laidley, so impulsively took that turn off.

Laidley was a pleasant little village. The caravan park was alright. There were a lot of permanent dwellers. It wasn’t flash, but was only $12 for the night. The owners used to live in our suburb!

Tea was smoked fish, beans, potatoes.

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2002 Travels April 16

TUESDAY 16 APRIL   LEOPARDWOOD TO ST GEORGE   420kms

We had to do a full pack up this morning, as nothing was done yesterday, due to the rain.

It was overcast again this morning, and I thought the day would turn out much as yesterday, here, but didn’t know what it would be like to the east.

The bread had gone mouldy – that didn’t last long – so I had to fall back on Cruskits for lunch.

What seemed a fairly small amount of rain had certainly created some large puddles and boggy patches on the track out to the main road. It obviously does not take much rain to affect the roads around here!

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Not looking good, up ahead!

Mike had already left before us – could see his wheel marks on the road.

Came to one part where the water was across the track and we got out and walked around, trying to find an alternative way around, or work out how boggy it might be. Then we found the tyre tracks where Mike had gone, with his heavy load, followed those and managed alright. It was a relief to get to the sealed road, though.

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Trying to decide which way is the best

We stopped for a morning tea break at the park in Cunnamulla, and refuelled in town – 91cpl. Had lunch at a roadside stop and made St George about 4pm.

When we got to where there was phone coverage, in Cunnamulla, John phoned J and told him about our power problems, and how we’d had to radically alter our trip plans as a result. He was not particularly helpful and made some vague comments about “thinking about it”. John was quite terse and made a comment about having been sold an expensive, dud, system.

Most of the way was through scrub and sparse woodland – mulga and callitris pine country mostly. The driver needed to be alert as the road was narrow. Occasional emus tempted their fate by being tardy in moving off the road.

The little Kamerooka Caravan Park at St George was very nice. $16 a night, and we were back on 240v power! The park had an excellent amenities block – one of the best I’d seen. The owner had a dog that we were sure was part dingo, though he said not (found out later that it is not legal to have dingoes or part dingoes in Qld!). He also had a young grey tabby cat that had adopted him. It was a very relaxed place.

There was a newer caravan park a bit further out of town that also looked good, but there was not much shade there, as yet.

As soon as we got to our site, I phoned J and left a message on his phone about where we were, that we had phone cover and that he should phone us before 9am tomorrow. He obviously had decided not to answer his phone. It was still business hours there and he should have been available. I think I probably sounded quite annoyed in my message – because I was!

It was really a total nuisance that we had to take time to go back east. I was conscious that this would take time out of our “proper” travel. Conscious, too, that before we left Melbourne, I had done something totally unusual for us – phoned and booked a site in a caravan park at Karumba, on the Qld Gulf coast, for three weeks, during July. Had mailed off a very hefty deposit on same. So that was a fixed arrangement we had to work to. This was not something we liked doing, but all the information I’d researched indicated that booking well ahead was the only way to get into Karumba in the middle of the year

Tea was lamb sausages and beans.

The TV signal was adequate enough for us to watch The Bill.

-4-16-2002 to st g


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2002 Travels April 15

MONDAY 15 APRIL     LEOPARDWOOD

The skies were quite cloudy through the day, which did not help with our power problem!

After breakfast, on the way back out to dig, we stopped at Mike’s house. He was starting to get the broken ‘dozer bucket ready to load on to his Toyota, and John helped him with that.

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Getting the broken bucket ready to load

My private thoughts were that he is really too old and ill to be living out here on his own. The work is so hard. He told us his wife was “not back yet” – not from where, or for how long she’d been away. Mike said he had phoned the nursing sister and she thinks he might have an ulcer. He is going to the doctor tomorrow – in Cunnamulla. From the way he looked, I suspected there might be more wrong than an ulcer.

We put in a couple of hours of digging, without much result, it seemed.

Spotted a new bird to us, on the track – a wedge bill, a kind of arid lands relative of the whip birds we have on the coast.

When we got back to camp, for late lunch, there was an old camper van there, with an elderly couple, who hailed from the Sunshine Coast. They were just camping for the night. We chatted for a little while.

John cleaned up his stones, then went back up to Mike’s to help load the bucket onto the tray back of the Toyota. It seemed a rather heavy load for the vehicle, to me.

When we’d left the diggings, at lunch time, there was a built up area of dark cloud, and some thunder as we drove back. The cloud built up more during the afternoon, and there was lightning too. Late in the day, it began to rain – at times it was quite steady rain. It cooled things down and was quite pleasant.

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Storm coming to the diggings

John had to run Truck a few times during the day to try to keep the power up. The fridge did not seem to run as much once it had cooled down outside.

We decided to head east tomorrow, to sort out the power. John had the idea that he might try to find out who does the power systems for Bushtracker vans, which are built in Queensland.

Tea was lime chilli chicken breasts and corn cobs.


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2002 Travels April 14

SUNDAY 14 APRIL     LEOPARDWOOD

It promised to be a hot day again. The most pleasant part of the night was actually the relative cool of the early morning.

I was up about 8am – feeling a bit stiff after yesterday’s mining efforts.

I tilted the van roof to try to get more charge into the battery system – that seemed to boost the amount of power going in, a bit.

After breakfast, we went out to the diggings again, and worked until lunch time.

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We found some more opal material – a bit scrappy seeming, but at least with colour. But it was nothing that got us greatly excited.

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A small seam of opal

The knees and crouching muscles became unhappy, again.

We noticed a group of the very pretty Major Mitchell cockatoos, out at the diggings. They seemed very curious about our activity, and sat on the low branches, watching closely.

After lunch, just sat around at the van, relaxing and enjoying being in the bush. I did some sewing. I was visited by a kangaroo, that hung about, watching me.

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Camp visitor

A couple of times through the afternoon, John ran the Truck for a while, to boost up the power levels in the van system. It is definitely continuing to fade. This is a real worry, as it is getting down close to the cut-out point, which would then mean the loss of all the stuff in the fridge.

About 4pm, we went for a walk – escaping without Hannibal noticing us. We crossed the ironstone flats, to a low rise about a kilometre away. Saw some babblers, but couldn’t identify which variety they were as they were flitting about all over the place. Also saw a crimson chat – beautiful. It was still hot at that time, and we were accompanied by the usual hordes of flies.

There was quite a cloud build-up later in the afternoon, and it looked like there might be rain, away to the south. That might go part way to explaining the persistent stickiness of the flies – always worse when rain is coming.

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Gathering clouds

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Rain falling to the south

I had another shower – with the spiders.

Tea was tinned fish and salad.

After tea, we discussed the power situation. Couldn’t see how we would be able to continue with our plans, which were to head up to Duck Creek opal fields, from here. We needed to go where we could get some decent advice on what to do about the system, and why it was not doing what we were promised it would. That may mean going to Brisbane.

Through the day we had seen no sign of life or activity up at Mike’s, but our concerns were a little allayed when some lights went on at dusk.


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2002 Travels April 13

SATURDAY 13 APRIL     LEOPARDWOOD

I got up about 7am. John slept until after 8. I sat outside with my mug of coffee and watched the bird life, of which there was quite a bit about. There were also quite a few flies!

Leopardwood is presumably named for the tree of the same name that is found around these parts, that has a mottled bark pattern.

It was about 10.15 before John was breakfasted and ready to embark on the day.

We went up to Mike’s place. He was busy doing something but, after a short delay, we followed him out to the diggings, not far beyond his house and the camp.

We learned that his pit digging machine had broken down. That meant that we could not do what had been talked of when we met him, last year. That would have involved him digging a pit, us paying $300 and doing the fossicking in the new pit, and then sharing finds with him.

Instead, we could pay $10 a day, and fossick on the surface, or in existing pits. Technically, Mike was not allowed to charge fees for camping on his place, because he does not meet the standards for camping, but he could allow free camping. So the $10 a day for fossicking rights was really a camping fee! Fair enough.

I was really disappointed by there being no proper dig, but John seemed to take it in his stride, which quite surprised me.

After a rather cursory sweep around the diggings, and a brief explanation of what we could do, Mike left us to it.

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The Leopardwood diggings

John did some surface scratching around, then we both gouged about in a cut, in the walls at its base. It was hard to tell if we were really doing it right, but we both found some opal “shows”. Nothing really jumped out at us as being worth cutting, though.

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John gives an idea of the scale of the cut where we worked

We had no idea whether the cut we’d chosen to work in had been left after one of Mike’s $300 deals, when the people had moved on, or if it was one that Mike had abandoned as being no good. In other words, whether we were wasting our time!

It got very hot down in the cut, and by 1pm I was feeling a bit ill, after working in the heat and the full sun. The kneeling/crouching was also very hard on the knees.

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Looking the part?

We went back to camp for a late lunch.

Then, I sat outside, in what shade I could find, sewing – amid what felt like millions of flies. John had a sleep, inside the fly-proof van.

In the late afternoon, we walked up to Mike’s place, about 300 metres from our camp. We had intended to go for a walk in the bush, the other way, but got waylaid by Hannibal, who was a bit aggressive, so we went where Mike might distract him.

Mike said he was not feeling well – he certainly did not look good.

Back at camp, I went for a shower in the rather ad hoc set up. The daddy long legs spiders inhabiting the dim area were a bit close for comfort. A frog under my foot startled me when it jumped away. Just too many critters! Because the water comes from the bore in a black plastic pipe, it was rather too hot to begin with. It was not a long shower.

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Willy willy near camp

Unbelievably, our power set up was causing concern. The fridge seemed to be running rather too frequently – was it the heat or was it malfunctioning? The battery power reading was dropping steadily under 12.

John fiddled about with running Truck and checking connections, and seemed to get some power going into the system. But as soon as Truck was disconnected, the power readout dropped fast, again. This was NOT the remote area, self sufficient system J had promised us. It actually seemed worse than when we were at Opalton, back in 2000, and we had only one panel and battery, then.

We had only been here 24 hours, and there had been steady sunshine. Not good at all.

It had been a hot and sweaty day. We seemed to attract millions of flies.

Tea was scotch fillet and mushrooms.

After tea, John briefly turned on his laptop and plugged it into the inverter, despite the low power reading, but he soon turned it off again.

It was a hot night.

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2002 Travels April 12

FRIDAY 12 APRIL   NORTH BOURKE TO LEOPARDWOOD   390kms

The grumpy worker in the tent behind us left, very noisily, at 5am. I was very tempted to get up and call out to him to be quiet because some of us had to sleep!

We were away before 9am.

Before we left, managed to make phone contact with our house sitter, which we had tried to do, unsuccessfully, the previous two nights. She said she had been out playing tennis, that all was well and that one cat was sleeping on her bed! It was a relief to contact her. This house sitter thing is new for us and it is still easy to imagine all sorts of problems.

It was another hot day. We are somewhat earlier in the year than most tourists visit these parts, because of this sort of heat.

The country north of Bourke was not particularly interesting, and we’d been that way before. Semi-arid mulga type country and much red dirt.

We reached Cunnamulla, in southern Qld, at lunchtime. Had not been into the town before. Last time, we turned onto the Charleville road on the outskirts of town. We walked around, having a look at the place. Looked at shops. Bought a magazine and a postcard, lotto tickets, milk and bread.

Whilst we were in mobile phone range, cleared the accumulated messages. One was from cousin K from Tasmania: they will be passing through Melbourne in early May and he was hoping to catch up with us. He’s out of luck there!

We ate our pre-packed lunch in a park in town, watching some little kids on a school outing, in the playground.

Then it was west on the Thargomindah road, through Eulo, where we stopped briefly, so John could check the price of diesel there. He bought us an icy pole each – nice, in the heat.

Then it was on, past the sealed road to Yowah and Toompine, that we took last year. There was not much of interest along the way. The road was narrow – basically a single width of bitumen. There were occasional floodways – dry – though there was a bridge over the Paroo River at Eulo, and there was water in that. The country was either lightly timbered scrub land, or grazing country.

Then we took the “back” unsealed Black Gate Road that goes to Yowah. Leopardwood was only about 4kms along this, and we turned and drove the track to some buildings that could be seen. It was about 3pm by then.

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Turning onto the Black Gate track

At what seemed to be the house, we could not find anyone around. But there was a billy goat and a goose on guard – quite effectively, too. The goat seemed to want to bail John up, so I distracted him with a bread crust, so John could get back in Truck! It was fortunate that I’d put the shopping bags from Cunnamulla inside Truck, behind my seat, rather than open up the van, so I was able to reach the bread to get the crust.

We followed the signs that were there, to the camp area, and began to set up, in a spot that looked alright, between some mulga trees that might provide a bit of shelter and shade.

Then Mike, the owner, came down, in an old, white, small wagon type of vehicle. He confirmed that it was alright for us to camp here. The goat – Hannibal – had followed the vehicle down, so Mike showed us how to handle him. In theory, at any rate. Hannibal gave us a head-butting exhibition against the spare wheel on Mike’s little ute. I decided I would prefer just to give him a wide berth!

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Hannibal being aggressive

We arranged to meet Mike up at his house, in the morning.

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Going home

We spent some time getting our camp set up.

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Leopardwood camp

There was a primitive shower and a long drop toilet, a water supply and a shelter. It was sort of a lot of oddments cobbled together. The water came from a bore and we thought it might be a bit sulphur-y – but alright to clean and wash with.

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The camp kitchen and the bathroom

Overall, we could be quite comfortable here, I thought.

We sat outside the van, watching the sunset. There was enough cloud in the sky to make it fairly spectacular. It was enjoyable to be out in the mulga country again, though round there the mulga was fairly sparsely scattered amongst areas of bare ironstone covered flats, and the like. It was not thickly wooded country. But the camp was in a somewhat better vegetated patch.

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Dusk over camp

It was a beautiful, balmy evening, with a bit of a breeze.

Tea was warmed up corn cakes and ratatouille, left over from the other night.

The night was silent – no urban noises out here. Wonderful.

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2002 Travels April 11

THURSDAY 11 APRIL   NARROMINE TO NORTH BOURKE   340kms

We left the park about 9am.

The day was somewhat hotter, as one would expect, heading north and inland. It was even a bit uncomfortable for travel, by the time we reached Bourke

There were a lot of trucks on the road, between Narromine and Nyngan. This stretch is part of the main route from Broken Hill to Sydney, so I guess that explained it.

Mostly, it was an uneventful drive.

We stopped briefly at Nevertire – a tiny village – for me to take a photo. The name symbolizes my attitude to travel, but apart from that, I thought it featured in a bush poem – maybe one of Paterson’s?

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Nevertire

Morning tea was at Nyngan. I used hot water from the thermos flask I carry in Truck, to make our tea and coffee, and cut a slice of fruit cake – not home made – for John.

Nyngan had obviously declined from the town it once was; some rather nice old buildings were now semi-derelict, including an hotel. But the town had created a very pleasant rest area in its centre, and there was a second one, too, just on the edge of town by the Bogan River.

Until after Nyngan, we had been passing through a mix of cultivated and grazing lands, but after this, gradually, the crop lands decreased. Closer to Bourke the country was clearly more arid, with areas of mulga scrub appearing and occasional bare red earth patches. Although, on the map, the road from Nyngan looked straight and potentially dull, it was in fact slightly undulating and with little hamlets at intervals – and thus, interesting enough. It was a rather narrow road, though.

We had our lunch of sandwiches I’d made this morning, in a rest area in the bush.

In Bourke, went straight to the fuel depot and got diesel – 90cpl. Having been here a couple of times before, know our way around the place, a bit, now.

We went then to the supermarket. It is now a new IGA one – with a heavily fenced carpark. There was a security guard manning the entrance. The new building had no windows – only a pair of doors, with a roller security screen that comes down and covers these, after hours.

I found the shelves were very sparsely stocked, with many open gaps. But they had the frozen battered, oven bake fish that I wanted to get for tea. John selected some indulgences – crisps and the like!

Later, a fellow camper was telling us that he had witnessed a ruckus there, involving a local girl, who was yelling that she had been cheated at the register. The camper had gone in to get some alcohol, (it was a licensed supermarket) and been surprised to find that the public was not actually allowed inside the alcohol section. One had to ask at a cashier’s window for what they wanted, and it was passed through, after payment. He seemed to think that this arrangement revealed much about the nature of the town.

Business completed, we drove out to North Bourke, across the bridge over the Darling River.

Booked into the Kidmans Camp caravan park. This was a relatively new park that we hadn’t tried before – mainly because we didn’t know it was there, until we passed it, driving north, in 2000. Our powered site cost $16.

Kidmans Camp was a very pleasant place to stay. The guests seemed to be a mix of tourists and short term itinerant workers, here to work on the orchards or the cotton farms that have grown up around Bourke, reliant on irrigation water from the Darling.

It was a hot afternoon, and after a minimal set up, John needed an afternoon nap. I went for a wander around the park. Then I had a shower – the almost new bathroom was very nice.

I cooked fries to go with our fish – all cooked in the electric frypan, outside the van.

After tea, we got talking to a man in a camper van that was set up next to us. He was travelling on his own. His talk indicated that he’d had an interesting life, having been n engineer and a helicopter pilot, who lost much of his wealth in the ’87 share market crash. We were not talking at all loudly, but a man in a tent, two rows behind us, demanded that we be quiet, because he had to get up and work in the morning!

04-11-2002 to bourke


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2002 Travels April 10

WEDNESDAY 10 APRIL   CANBERRA TO NARROMINE   410kms

We were up about 7am. Saw S and SIL off to work.

We got away about 8.40. Had no issues hitching up, but took it very cautiously driving back out of the narrow driveway.

It was the busy morning traffic time through central Canberra, but it was just a matter of getting into a lane, then following the car in front. That was after we’d negotiated the systems of roundabouts around Parliament House and then City Hill. I’d planned the route carefully in advance – past experience had shown me how easy it is to go astray on these roundabouts, and find oneself merrily sailing back the way we’d come!

We stopped in Yass to do some banking – easier than trying to find both the right bank and a place to park the rig in one of the Canberra shopping localities. Refuelled there – 85cpl.

From Yass, we travelled via Boorawa, Cowra, Gooloogong, Eugowra, Parkes, Peak Hill, turning at Tomingley to head to Narromine.

It was pleasant driving, for much of the day, through farmlands, rolling hills, and the Lachlan River valley. We were mostly on minor roads with little traffic.

We lunched by the Lachlan River at Cowra, in a park area – very pleasant.

We were on the Newell Highway for only some 66kms. There were many trucks on it, heading south.

Topped up the fuel again at Peak Hill – 87cpl.

We arrived at Narromine about 4pm. Our site at the Rose Gardens Caravan Park cost $16.20, after Top Tourist discount. We were able to stay hitched up. The park was pleasant enough.

After a minimal set up, John had a nap. I sewed.

I made corn cakes and ratatouille for tea – very nice.

John’s usual, big, TV aerial produced no picture. He hooked up the little Tandy one, wedging it into the folding bar of the poptop roof, and it was brilliant! Work that one out!

04-10-2002 to narromine