5th April:
Our 1st night we spent west of Singleton. A few other vans were already set up when we finally called a halt to our travels for the night at Pothana rest area. It was quite noisy as it was near the highway. Had full wireless reception and T.V. reception with our winegaurd aerial.
6th April:
Travelled to Ulan Road which you turn onto near Cassilis. Down here we wanted to see two sites. The newly found Brett Whitely rock drawings and an Aboriginal rock art site.
We had a quick look in at hands on rock and decided we would come back there to stop for the night. Travelling a little further down the road we found the turn off to Drip Gorge in the Goulburn River National Park. This walk took about 70 mins return. We took our water and hats and started off. There were other people picnicing at the entrance to the walk. A sense of amazement came over both of us when we discovered the Brett Whiteley rock drawings. How amazing to think they are still there after being covered in water and debri during floods and absolutely no graffiti. They are in such good condition with strong colours and outlines, I think they were painted in the 70's. Apparently Brett and his daughter were in the gorge when it started to rain, they took shelter under the overhang, and Brett dancing around naked started drawing. This was uncovered when a movie of Brett painting the artwork was found and up until this time NP's have insisted it was Aboriginal, yet the local mob (the Wiradjuri) consistently told NP that it was not done by their ancestors.
Drip Gorge
Campsite at Hands on Rock 
Hands on rock
April 7th:
Travelled to Gulgong where we walked about this historic town. So well preserved and it is obvious that the locals are very proud of their town, it is so clean and tidy, all well painted and looked after. Onto Wellington where we did a bit of shopping, bought a journal so that I can record my thoughts and do some drawings, life has passed me by lately and as an artist I haven't done much at all artistically, this was my chance to sit and ponder, drawing to my hearts content.
Amazing how little things happen in life that are uncanny, while reading the paper I purchased in Wellington there was a small item about Brett Whitely, today, the 7th was his birthday and he would have been 70 years old. Bloody fantastic - how uncanny - it's his birthday and we've been to see his paintings the day before - it's like he gave us a gift.
Outside Gulgong Pub - Two dogs and a bike!
Wellington Hotel
We overnighted at Yeoval where we just about walked the entire town. Here once again in such a small town we were enthralled to find that Banjo Patterson has at least three memorials to him. These included a park with a 100 year old slab shelter over a picnic table that has checker boards painted on it and checkers supplied in a bag to that you can play a game. Patterson lived not far from the town on a property when he was young.
Yeoval, is were we camped literally on Ye Oval! This was a free spot at the showground/racetrack and in the morning a horse trainer came round towing a horse on the back of his station wagon. He slowly increased his speed to a canter - this was an amazing sight and we had not seen this done before.
Yeoval ShowgroundApril 8th:
From here we drove through the national park to Peak Hill. We pulled into Leighton and Paulines Peak Hill caravan park early at about 1pm. Set up and before we new it our friends Marg and Wayne (Frosty's travels here) arrived, I might add here that they were just in time for Paulines scones. Yes, Pauline bakes a fresh batch of scones every day and smothers them with jam and cream, Leighton then takes them round offering one to each camper. Very welcome by all at the end of the day. The park itself was extremely comfortable, spotless amenities. Leighton actually guides every new arrival to their campsite and guides them in.
Peak Hill Caravan Park
April 9th:
Decided to tour the open cut gold mine which is only a walk from the caravan park. Rich and deep ochre colours through the pit which was so deep it's hard to describe, water filled in the bottom, so deep it was black with a red tinge to the edges where it lapped the walls. We walked the full circuit of the rim with every step showing something new. I would call it the ochre pits because they were all there the colours, red, white, yellow, burgundy, black. Marg stayed near the entrance as she had brought with her a gold detecter. When we left her she was digging away furiously at what the detector said could be gold! But alas, no such luck as it turned out to be an old nail.
Peak Hill open cut gold mine
April 10th:
We decided to do a trip to Tullamore to see the Irish festival. Unfortunately this was a fizzler as really there was nothing on until the night when they had a religious gathering. On the drive over we found a fabulous old relic that was once a community hall - falling down - even the old piano had collapsed and the insides were sitting on top of the wood, amazing. Would make a great overnight stop, so marked that down in our readers digest map book. We thought that the vegetation on the way over was remarkedly like that up near Lighting Ridge and the border country, galvanised burr, mulla mulla and sandalwood, same red rich earth colour as well.
Ken & Jan Trott's 5th wheel
Old relic: community hall on road to Tullamore
The big event! Saturday nights Roast
April 12th:
Marg, Wayne, Cheryl & Pat all took off to Dubbo Zoo. Wayne hurried us along by calling on the CB that he had a truck up his rear and could we please move a bit faster, which Pat obligingly did. Wayne & Marg had been to the zoo before but we hadn't and we were blown away. We certainly will be going back again. We loved the old Galapagos tortoises and the hippos and rhinos. I felt sad though for the elephants who didn't have a very natural area (I felt) to live in, no natural stream or lake to swim in - they had a concrete one. We loved the Lemurs and monkeys which were amazing, their agility is something to behold. We hired a 4 seater golf buggy for 3 hours, each of us had a turn to drive and didn't we have a ball. The great thing about the zoo is there are no fences to look over and most of the compounds are built in a natural form.
Our limousine at Dubbo Zoo
April 13th:
A wet Cassilis rest area
April 14th:
On the way to Burning mountain we stopped at Merriwa for the liquid red amber which we had run out of. A great little town with a fabulous metal artwork near the craft/information gallery - if you can, go see this artwork it was great. A lovely drive through to Scone, hardly any traffic, we really like going on the back roads as there is very little traffic and no big trucks tailing you. We found a nice overnight free spot at a little town called Bunnan and popped that into our readers digest map book. Stopped at Burning Mountain, this was a 1 1/2 hour walk, a steep climb to start with, but so well worth the effort. The burning mountain is amazing, just that, it is actually burning, there is smoke coming from it. It is a seam of burning coal which has been burning for 5000 years and it moves a metre per year. Where it has burnt out the ground has dropped down to fill the void. The ground where it is burning is baked red hot and some of the dirt is white from the heat with steam coming off it. Apparently the early explorers thought it was a volcano. No trees are growing where the seam is still burning.
Burning Mountain
Travelled through Murrurundi and stopped for breakfast at Wollobadah. This is a great spot for overnighting, beside a river, and you are allowed to stop for 24 hrs. There were a few vans there obviously overnight and were doing their washing. We topped up our fresh water tank here. The site is near the road bridge, so maybe a bit noisy with trucks as it is the New England highway. Beside the park is a memorial to the first fleet, we wandered round looking for our family surnames amongst the convict names, and Pat's Robinson came up 10 times more than my Anderson, I'll leave up to you readers to form an opinion of that!! Kept going on the road to Nundle, again a really nice little town which we will come back to as we didn't have time to look about much. Headed along the Fossickers way and then onto the Nowendoc road which goes through the Port Stevens Gap. This was a bit of a surprise because we had 5 klms of white knuckle driving due to the road being one lane only most of the way along the mountainsides. I'm sure Pat was holding his breath dreading any oncoming vehicles - our luck though as no one came our way. We breathed easy when we reached the top of the range and had an easy drive into Walcha.
Headed straight through Walcha to our free camp for the night 4kms east on the Oxley highway. Great views over the valley and all free. Beautiful sunset, reasonably cool evening and then a cold night. A really quiet night, no trucks. The morning was something, all the valley was filled with mist and low cloud, with the heads of the trees poking through, and managed to get some great photos. Went into Walcha in the morning to see the public artworks. I particularly wanted to see Gordon Hookey's work as I have previously worked with Gordon on the Casula Powerhouse Arts Centre, Aboriginal floor. We were quite disappointed to see that the Walcha council isn't keeping the artwork, which is in the ground, tidy. It needs mowing, and the edges trimmed, some of the artwork can't be seen because of the long grass - very disappointed indeed.
Campsite at Walcha
Gordon Hookey's Walcha ArtworkApril 16th:
Left Walcha for Ellenborough Reserve - a very slow drive down the Oxley highway, through the mountains. This was the first time we had driven the van down this road and even though the scenery is brilliant, we both didn't get to see much of it! There seemed to be a really heavy smog, which for this part of the country is unusual, could be a combination of the heavy mist and local burning off. We arrived with relief at Ellenborough only to remember that it was school holidays and the place had a lot of campers. It had also been raining heavily the past two days resulting in mud and churned up water holes through out the park. We ended up backing into the bollards on the gravel carpark. Had a cuppa and light lunch when the council rangers pulled up.
Some hoon had driven their car through the chained drive onto the picnic area - it must have been a largish car/4wd because the post was split from the force. The rangers had to ask some tenters to move as they were in the day picnic area only, they were nice though and said we were okay as we were parked on the parking lot. We then put a casserole on for tea in the cob oven, cooked treat and tasted superb.
Ellenborough reserve
April 17th:
Woke this morning to something we hadn't heard for a couple of weeks - the garbo's! The local roosters were all saying good morning to each other and prompted us to get up, something we really didn't want to have to do! Took a slow easy couple of hours to get ourselves ready and pack up for our trip to Port Macquarie and then home. Travelled up the Oxley highway and into Port Macquarie to have our van suspension checked out as we are having it upgraded.
Stopped at Telegraph Point's - Log Wharf Reserve for a cuppa and lunch obviously we were trying our hardest to put off arriving home! But arrive home we did to the joyous jumping up and down of our boxer, Jessie, and the constant wagging of his tail our cattle dog, Jaffa. It's good to be home, although we can't wait to go away again.
Till next time, safe travels.
