A Winter's Trip

On the road again - with our buddies P & D....this time we hit the road to get to Lightning Ridge.
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,

* photo stolen from Diana Davey

 and ended up camping at Cranky Rocks Reserve near Warialda.
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.

Woody Head

It was a while ago now but we went camping at woody Head in northern NSW with some friends.
It is a National Park and there is a great campsite there with all the facilities.

The weather wasn't the best as I recall but we managed to get a mornings paddling on the pristine Esk River.

Meanwhile back at the campground....

there are rock platforms to explore and some friends locals!

The long, deserted (when we were there!) beaches are perfect for beachcombers -

You can walk south along beaches and through rainforest to Iluka -

where you can share your fish and chips with the pelicans and wave to Yamba over the way -

Woody Head is part of Bundjalung National Park.
The campground is suitable for tents and caravans and there are some cabins if you don;t want to BYO.
There is an entry fee as well as a camping fee.
Here is a map if you are interested in visiting.
And there is more information on the National Parks website

Surf's up!

I never tire of the beautiful beaches near where I live.
It's a dream come true that we have been able to live here. I know it's only been 8 months since we actually moved here properly, but I hope I never tire of these scenes.

Watch out! There could be more.....

We finally get to Bowraville.

Bowraville is a little gem of a town in the Nambucca Valley.
It used to be called Bowra, but people got confused with Bowral! (Which is about 600 kms away)

It is lately famous around these parts for having an indie theatre which shows movies and live gigs.
It has got a pleasant art deco facade and looks neat inside when we peered through the doors. We'll have to go back when there's something on to have a good look.
Apparently it was closed in the 1960's but was restored by the local community. Good on them!

Bowraville has a pretty quaint main street.
It is wide as many of the towns built in those days were - designed so that bullock teams could turn in the street. In this case the bullock teams were carrying red cedar logged from further up the Nambucca Valley.
Bowraville was the port where the logs were taken downstream. Hard to believe these days as the river is silted up - this is what it looks like now -

This was once a busy port!

Of course there were pubs, and this grand example survives -

When you visit Bowra, you just have to go to the folk museum.
Apparently it is "one of Australia's best"!
And it does have an eclectic collection of, well, just about everything.

Including a german mine -

And some rather freaky models!

There are a couple of shops worth poking around in -

At the top of the hill is the Phoenix Art Treasures with some great, so cheap, handmade crafts by local adults with disabilities. 

There's a lovely little garden cafe - The Mad Hatter Tea Garden, where we had lunch.

The main street has plenty of photo ops of the charming old weatherboard buildings, some a little unloved now.

This time we missed out on the Frank Partridge VC military museum....maybe next time, or maybe not.
Anyway we have now been there, done that and as I say we may be back to catch a show at the theatre or for a drive further into the hills.
Bowraville is about 20 mins drive from Macksville to the west of the Pacific Highway. took us about an hour from Kempsey.

The Rocks - as we call it around here!

If you live in Sydney then The Rocks is THE Rocks, so we were a little confused when we heard people around these talking about going to The Rocks for something - turns out they mean South West Rocks.
Now we are locals we can say The Rocks and know that we only have to drive about 40 mins to get there.
There is much to recommend The Rocks - a very nice cafe down by the river (The Boatshed), lovely north-facing beaches, Horseshoe Bay which is perfect safe swimming for kids, another lovely cafe overlooking Horseshoe Bay (Malt & Honey), and a more than reasonable Thai restaurant (Thai on the Rocks), it has a cinema (The Roxy, of course), and there is camping right on Horseshoe Bay.
I'm sure we'll discover more of its charms in the weeks to come but this is for starters.