Toowoomba

We originally planned to spend a week in Toowoomba then move on to Roma. About a month ago it occurred to us that this period coincided with a perfect storm of holiday horror - school holidays, plus Easter, plus Anzac Day - and that perhaps we should book the caravan parks. When we rang Roma they basically just laughed at us - 'You want to book WHEN??' Luckily the park in Toowoomba was a bit more accommodating, if perhaps a bit reluctantly, and we've spent the entire 10-day holiday period here.

We've had a fairly quiet time in Toowoomba, not least due to the damp weather. On one day we made the 130km journey into Brisbane, but showers turned into rain turned into sleet, so all we really saw was the inside of the Queensland museum, awash with school kids.

On one fine day we wandered north to the Ravensbourne and Crows Nest national parks. Not all the walks were open, but we managed to see enough to stretch our legs. On the way we called in to the Cuckoo Clock Centre at Cabarlah, which is stuffed full of, yes, cuckoo clocks. They are all set to different times, so every few minutes one of them does the regulation 'cuckoo, cuckoo', otherwise the noise would be deafening on the hour!

Over the Easter weekend itself we played in a 2 day golf tournament, neither of us managing to feature in the prize rundown. We weren't interested in attending Toowoomba's Easter festival of Gospel Music, which was just as well as a big storm on Saturday evening brought the tent down, the caravan park was littered with clothes, shoes and bags drying in the Sunday morning sun the next day.

Queensland

We've now entered Queensland, which means we've taken the caravan into every mainland state and territory except the ACT. First stop was Goondiwindi, situated right on the MacIntyre River, which forms the state border with NSW. The town is most famous for Gunsynd, a champion racehorse of the early 1970s. We visited the small Gunsynd display at the local information centre, with trophies, newspaper clippings and a video showing his most famous races. We also did the town heritage walk and, given there wasn't a lot else to do, ended up having a couple of games of golf.

Some time ago Queensland used the slogan 'Beautiful one day, perfect the next'. Our experience, unfortunately, has been 'Beautiful one day, crap the next'. For our couple of days at Goondiwindi we had perfect weather - blue skies, sunshine, mid-20s. We've now moved on to Toowoomba and the weather has also moved on - its now cloudy, drizzly and, with a top today of 17, pretty cold, with not much better forecast for the next few days. You can see the difference in the sky in the two photos! Toowoomba is situated on an escarpment about 130km from Brisbane, and with something like 100,000 people living here is a substantial sized city.

Today we did the local scenic drive, which given Toowoomba's position provided many dramatic views and lookouts. With 240 parks and gardens, Toowoomba likes to call itself the 'Garden City'. In between showers we walked around a couple of the more interesting parks. As many people would know, Toowoomba was badly affected by floods earlier this year, and many of the local walking tracks were damaged and are still closed. We're still hoping to get some walking done in the rest of the week that we are here, weather permitting, but may have to head further afield to find them.

Before our drive today John decided to get his hair cut. He came home most indignant, the hairdresser didn't even ask for a seniors card, she just automatically charged him the pensioner rate. I guess when you tell people that you are retired and living the life of a grey nomad they just make certain assumptions!

Narrabri

Narrabri is in the centre of cotton country, and we had been hoping to do a tour of a cotton gin, but these no longer run so we had to content ourselves with just a photo of a cotton field. We also visited the Australia Telescope Compact Array, a collection of 6 telescopes used by the CSIRO to study far distant galaxies. One telescope is fixed while the other 5 can be moved along a 3km rail track - interestingly the track is absolutely flat and does not follow the curvature of the earth, although you couldn't tell the difference with the naked eye.

On Saturday the local wine and food festival, the Nosh on the Namoi (named after the nearby Namoi River), was held in easy walking distance from our caravan park. This was a pleasant coincidence as we hadn't even been aware that it was on until we got here. We came home with some gluten free anzac biscuits and local cheese, as well as fish and fresh salad veg for dinner.

The main local attraction is the nearby Mt Kaputar National Park, centred on a range of hills formed by volcanic activity around 20 million years ago. Subsequent weathering has left dramatic landforms including volcanic plugs and sheer cliffs, contrasting with the flat plains beyond. We spent a terrific day here doing various walks. We had hoped to spend another day at a different part of the park walking into a deep gorge, but after struggling down a very muddy 4wd track (compliments of the heavy rain the night before) to the parking area, we managed only about 100 metres of the walking track before being stopped by a gushing creek, presumably thanks to the same rain. A third section of the park which has organ-pipe style rock formations known as Sawn Rocks was closed as they are doing upgrades to the access road, so we'll have to make a repeat visit to Narrabri to finish off the experience.

Tamworth Revisited

At the same time as we had the hot water service fixed last week, we also had an Anderson plug attached to the car and caravan. This is probably something we should have had all along, and enables us to maximise the use of the caravan battery. When we picked up the van on Monday and tried to hitch up, we found that the lead they had attached to the caravan was not long enough to reach the plug they had attached to the car. It took them only about 30 minutes of fiddling around before they said it was all attached and we were on the road. Imagine our surprise when we stopped for lunch a few hours later and found that the new Anderson plug was missing and the raw ends of the lead were dragging on the ground. We can only surmise that the lead was still not quite long enough and pulled out the plug when we turned a corner. We now have the van booked in here at Tamworth for tomorrow morning when we leave to get it repaired (and presumably lengthened), we've sent an email to the Gosford repairers saying we expected them to pay us back for the extra repair, but given they have ignored us don't hold out much hope for getting our money back.

About 115 km short of Tamworth we stopped at Burning Mountain, which is an underground coal seam that has been on fire for over 5,000 years. A 4 km walk took us to the current fire front, which is apparently moving at around 1 metre per year - so when it was discovered in the mid-1800s it was about 150 metres further back. The walk trail was directly above the coal seam, so the trees became more and more sparse as you got closer to the fire front, and the vegetation had had less time to recover. Above the actual point of the fire burning underground the ground was completely bare, you could feel the heat rising and it had a sulphurous smell, although we didn't see any wisps of smoke, which reportedly issue regularly. The photo is taken looking towards the fire front, and you can see that the trees and grass have started to disappear ahead of the front as the ground heats up.

When we were in Tamworth last year the weather prevented us from having a game of golf, so we had rung Tamworth Golf Club from Sydney and booked in to make sure we didn't miss out again. However, when we turned up at the course we found they were in the middle of coring their greens and had 18 temporary greens in play, a little fact they had omitted to mention on the phone. Instead we headed over to the other course in town, Longyard, and found a fantastic Greg Norman designed course, only $20 green fees, and in 18 holes we twice saw another group in the distance on another fairway, so ended up doing very well out of the situation.

On our other day in Tamworth we did the Fossicker's Way scenic drive down to Nundle, a very pretty town in the foothills of the Great Dividing Range. We did the town heritage walk, the highlight being the local woollen mill. This was set up about 10 years ago with vintage machinery sourced from all over Australia, and in some cases overseas, to provide a tourist focus and employment in the town. We saw hanks of wool being dipped into vats of dye, previously dyed hanks being wound onto cones ready to be turned into balls (picture above), and the final balls of wool having bands glued around them for final sale to eager knitters. The mill shop sold not just the final product, but also lovely hand knitted garments - apparently 20 knitters are employed in town. We had lunch at a nearby trout farm - freshly smoked trout and salad, the trout still warm from the smoker, then admired the view from Hanging Rock lookout on the way back.

2 days has probably not been enough in Tamworth, even with our visit here last year, there are still things to be seen and done in the area, maybe next time we'll finally get a game of golf at the Tamworth GC!

Spending Time with Family

In Albany a few months ago we noticed water in one of our cupboards. It seemed too much of a coincidence that it was the cupboard holding the hot water service, but after 3 visits to the local repair people we were convinced by them that it wasn't the hot water service, but a leak coming in from the outside, and they said they would need to keep the van for several days to identify it. Given the van is our home this wasn't practical, so we booked it in to a repair place just north of Sydney, near where John's sister Diane lives.

Last week we left Lithgow and hauled the van over the Blue Mountains - an operation requiring a great deal of use of second gear both going up and coming back down. We got to John's sister's place on the Central Coast, unpacked the things we thought we'd need for a week, and took the van over to be repaired (hopefully). They took one look and said it was probably the hot water service, as if it was an outside leak there would be staining on the caravan wall. Sure enough a couple of days later we got a phone call from them, saying they had taken out the hot water service and it had several corrosion holes, a new service has now been installed and everything should be ready to go again tomorrow. We weren't very happy at the short life span of quite an expensive item - after all it is still less than 3 years since we got the van. We have been assured that the problem was that the old service did not have an anode, so the aluminium tank corroded easily. Apparently the new tank will be fitted with an anode, which will corrode and need to be replaced at least annually, which should be an easier and cheaper exercise than replacing the entire tank.

Meanwhile we have taken the opportunity to visit with John's family - not just Diane and her family, but his 2 children and 2 grandchildren, plus his brother and sister-in-law. Wendy's legs have had a bit of a workout - she and Diane climbed Mt Blackwall in Ettalong, not a hugely long walk but very steep, and on another day we went 10-pin bowling with John's 6 year old grandson. Needless to say John won, but Wendy did manage to just scrape home second. Not sure whether the same will be said next year!

A big thank you to Diane and Steve for their hospitality, hopefully we'll be able to return the favour when we tire of the nomad life and finally settle down.