And, we're home!

After much deliberating, we decided to come home a little bit early in order for Dave to do a couple of things around the house before he goes back to work.
We got in yesterday afternoon, and my lovely Mum made us curry and roti as a welcome home treat. The cat is so happy we're home, and the house (I'm Sorry to say) has never looked better!

I'm putting up a few photos here that I forgot to post over the last few days and then making a facebook album with ALL of them in it and the link I will post here aswell.

All in all, it was a very rewarding trip. We got to see places that we haven't before, and met so brilliant people and heared their stories.

Goondiwindi.. Again

Tonight we stopped at Goondiwindi for the night, and its safe to say that this is the 2nd nosiest park we've been to this trip, the 1st being the park on the other side of town. (The truck photo is one that Dave took outside our trailer when we got here this afternoon.)

Being that we're 320kms (roughly) away from home, its not been settled if we're going to hot foot it back and rescue my Mum from the clutches of my cat, or dawdle about some more.

In either case, once we do get back home and back to decent WiFi, I'll put more pictures up. 

We decided to stay another night at LR, because there was a lot to see & do and we're only 700km-ish from home.

The car door tours (where they've painted car doors either red, blue, green, yellow and each colour is a different tour around town) were quite good, and we even got taken under ground (for me that is REALLY difficult to believe!) And showed a still used mine. I, honestly, was almost at the point of saying 'No! Let me go back upstairs!' When we got off the 113 steps, and it opened it into this rather roomy cave type thing. (Even Dave could stand up straight)

Tonight we're going back to the Artesian Bore that is about 200 metres down the road from us.

Lightning Ridge

We drove from Burke to Lightning Ridge today, deviating a little in the middle to do some food shopping.
There is a big thermal pool in LR, so Dave and I went and checked it out tonight... Its like a really really big warm bath. So lovely, we just floated about for half an hour!

We saw a phenomenal amount of emus today, as well as lots of kites, hawks and ever a few eagles in the mix. We've found there to be almost a swarm of birds in the sky as you drive into/out of towns.

We're not sure what our plan is tomorrow, we might meander about here for the day. This town is full of opal stores/shops/outlets so we may poke our head into a few of them.

Fire fire, burning bright!

This was our fire tonight. I say that because it became a chimney and smoked us out and then burnt to the ground.
Dave was happy. :)

Dinner, wine, fire, sunset over billabong and Sarina

Paroo darling national park last night

Trilby Station

Just a quick post to say that for the last few days we've been in and out of national parks so the phone service has been pretty rubbish, and it might continue to be.

Tonight though, we're staying at Trilby Station, which is just south of Burke in western NSW. It is spectacularly beautiful here, and I do not want to leave! Is run by a family of sheep farmers, so there are ewes and rams running about the place.

Washing is done, and we're sitting around the fire.
Lovely.

Broken Hill

The long road to broken hill. Well, about 300kms long.
Toilet with a beehive in it, the bees don't mind, and move out of the way for you.
Packs of wilds goats litter the road, and the highway is so flat and straight that the horizon is a heat haze with a few trees.

We stopped for lunch and immediately found ourselves in the presence of a king duck (Dave thinks its a goose it was that big!) It was very old and blind in one eye but he had his harem of little white girl-ducks following him around, so there is hope still for him!

I was searching for a camp site in Broken Hill and couldn't for the life of me found a half decent one that wasn't a bazillion dollars! Being that it is the only town for a few hundred kms, I can understand. But we found out that the racecourse runs a camp site on its off-season and its about half the price that the caravaparks wanted.

Tomorrow we'll slowly head north through some back country roads and might camp in a national park tomorrow night.

posted from Bloggeroid

Camping at broken hill racecourse tonight

Murray-Sunset National Park.

Plan

Cuurent plan is to travel west from swan hill to ouyen, up through the wyperfield np for a couple of nights. Then on to mildura.
From mildura the trek home looks like broken hill, wilcania-bourke rd, bourke then who knows.

Echuca

It was an animal sighting day, yesterday. As we were driving toward Echuca along a little dirt road, we spotted a rather large (but unfortunately dead) Kangaroo. On top of it was a Wedge-tail eagle (That Dave estimated to be 1.8m across).
It didn't like us being so close, so it hopped off the Roo and made a B-line for a nearby tree. The tree's resident magpies were not at all glad to see it, but it dwarfed them significantly and they didn't have a hope of moving it.
We kept going and also saw a big red fox sitting under a shady tree (That got a ear-piercing excited-squeal from me!) and a stag whose antlers were huge!

We got to Echuca and stopped beside the Murray river to figure out where we were going to stay that night, and a paddle steamer called the "Emmy-Lou"  came cruising down the river.
Dave drove through some rather deap mud holes getting back to the main road and I'm very glad I didn't have my window down.

We weren't sure whether we were going to stay for a couple of days in Echuca, but we've packed up and are heading to Swan Hill today.

Duck duck sarina

Mt Hotham and Yarrawonga

It was raining and awful when we got to Yarrawonga yesterday, so instead of camping in the wet we chose to class it up for the night and head to a motel. The Paradise motel was lovely, and we went to the local RSL for dinner.

Yesterday we also drove over Mt Hotham ski fields. The snow wasn't falling on us too bad so we were able to drive up and over, but you could see where the snow plow had been and the bank of snow that had built up on the side of the road was as tall, if not taller, than the car.

We're following the Murray River today, and hopefully will end up in Echuca this afternoon.

Snow snow snow

Rain Rain

It was a cloudy, rainy and very wet day yeasterday so we decided (Dave, more than me) to traverse the wilds, and go to the Murray 1 hydro-power station for a guided tour.

The 'tour' was more "look at the pictures of the stuff that we've done...!" (which we couldn't actually see for real) and at long last the tour guide told us more about the disappearance of Harold Holt than the power station itself... but that was fine. We made our way through the station and with coffee in hand, and saw an old documentary on the building of that and the other Snowy stations.

At the end of the day, we drove through some very english-looking country side and found a few backroads. I renewed my want of an Irish Wolfhound after seeing one teetering on the back of a farmers truck in the rain (We're not bloody getting a 'status' dog!... says Dave)

We had a lot of wind and rain when we got back today and Dave decided to 'batten down the hatches' with the tent ropes. The result was an interesting rope maze.

Today we're packing up and leaving this wonderful camp site, and going on to Omeo.

posted from Bloggeroid

Snow capped mountains

Sarina Murray meet murray river