o the headland we were lucky enough to be able to see quite a few whales surfacing and generally rollicking about in the distance. This area, like Kaikoura in N.Z., is a stop off for the whales away from the Antarctic winter.We moved inland and stayed the night at Mullumbimby which boasts itself as the 'biggest small town' in Australia. That's a slant on the Australians who always seem to have or be the biggest of something! Next we headed further inland towards the New England Highway which is one of the three main routes south from Queensland.
We are now traveling up in the ranges of the Great Divide and spent several days in Wollomombi Gorge and Aspley Falls in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. It is a rather large park at 142,000 hectares and just beautiful country with great canyons and huge waterfalls. I think this area is as high (1400 meters) as it gets in New South Wales or even the whole of Oz and it has certainly been cool on a couple of nights. One of the nights turned out to be the coldest night we have ever spent over here and the only day we have ever been confined to barracks in the van because of the weather. Out came the beanie hats, gloves, and the hot water bottle. Hot soup was the order of the day as well. On fine days the flies are out in full force, but not here!! We saw our first snake a 2 metre long python slithering across the road in
front of us. Though not as harmful to us as the smaller brown variety it seemed a bit scary. We also got our first puncture after 17,000kms and it was unfortunately on the inside back wheel. I managed to change it alright after applying some brute force, but had to buy a new tyre in Armidale ($220.00). Spending a weekend camping beside the Cockburn River (nth of Tamworth) we met up with an American family with six of their seven children.They live locally and belong to a religious sect similar to the Amish in Pennsylvania.We spent an interesting day with them and they decided to all sing us a camping song when they packed up at the end of the day. Really great.Tamworth. - Had to go see the big golden guitar in the country and western capital of Australia. We camped the
night up at the lookout above the town because I wanted to see the stars and the Orionid meteor shower that night (but saw nothing but an early morning wallaby and a couple of joggers who must do their early morning run up the hill.) Spent some time swimming in the local pool, then it was back to the bush again near a quaint little town called Nundle and the Chaffey and Sheba Damms, 1,100 metres up in the main divide. I don't know how many times it is now that we have crossed or gone up to the Great Dividing Range. The van chuggs up the steep roads in second at about 20 kph and we coast down with the exhaust brakes engaged because they are very steep compared with NZ roads - sort of like the Arthur's Pass Road before the viaduct! We ended up spending 4 nights in this area and met up with some couples from the Newcastle area, who were caravaning. We had a good evening around the campfire with someone on the guitar playing country music which seemed quite appropriate.On to Wallabadah - on the New England Highway, which has a wonderful garden area devoted to the history of the First Fleet arriving in Australia. It has information on all eight ships and those on board and whether they were crew , passenger or convict. If they were convicts it also lists where they were convicted and how many years hard labour they were given. It made very interesting reading and I wonder why they don't have anything like this in Sydney Harbour.
(Dave there was a Sarah Partridge, convict given 7 years on one of the ships. Any relation of yours?)
We have spent nearly all of the last month traveling on or around the New England Highway so most of it has been 1300 metres above sea level. It was very interesting when we were in the small town of Urella when Maureen was fossicking for a bit of gold in the rocky creeks to come across and area of fine gold sandy beach, sea shells and all. Apparently this area used to be part of the sea thought its hard to imagine it now. We also came across a character Captain Thunderbolt who used to rob coaches passing through this area in the 1850's and although he is not well known outside this area they have named a highway after him - Thunderbolts Highway which we travelled some distance on. Our navigator (Maureen) noticed a small town nearby called Timor, so we took a detour around there. There is nothing left now of what seems to have been an old township apart from the fire station. The whole area now seems to be devoted to stud farms.
Tomorrow is Melbourne Cup Day and the whole country seems to be besotted with it so we are off to find a place where we can a least view the activities on TV.
We will then head for the Blue Mountains where we are to meet up with friends Ray and Sheila Hall from NZ who are on holiday in the area.
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