Our first stop was Uralla, a decent enough day trip for us towing the caravan up the hill from Wauchope.
Uralla has many delights and deserves a blog post of its own as I took a barrel of photos.
It was cold: minus 1 in the caravan in the morning.
Sensibly we had a powered site in a cute little caravan park.
The next day we met our buddies in Guyra, stopped for lunch in Tingha,
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| * photo stolen from Diana Davey |
This is a great spot, very surprising as you just drive through a lot of farming country and then this outcrop of rocks appears.
A shortish drive took us to Collarenebri which is on the Barwon River and has a free camp.
What more could you ask for?!
The town is a bit sad and neglected which makes me sad : (
But I have some more photos somewhere!
Then onwards to Lightning Ridge.
When drove into town, on a Sunday....lo and behold there was a market happening!
What's more one of the stalls was selling Holy Goat coffee! Win!!
Lightning Ridge is an opal mining town.
And it has a pretty typical mining town vibe.
Dusty streets, ramshackle buildings, piles of mining debris everywhere....but I kindof like it. It's different.
One of the very best things about this part of the world is that there is deep, hot, subterranean water....and that means hot baths!
The ones here are free and open 24/7.
We camped just out of town on Lorne station.....this isn't it!
But it was good place for us to stay as we could bush camp and there were toilets and hot showers and a camp kitchen and you could have a fire, if you could find enough wood.
Then we parted ways (just for now) with out buddies and we toddled over to the Pilliga forest, between Coonabarrabran and Narrabri and Barradine.
On the first night we were the only people camped at this campsite in the national park.
It was bliss.
There was enough to see to keep us well-occupied for a day and I have more to blather on about....
so watch this space.
That is an abridged version of our winter trip to the outback of New South Wales.
