Last leg home

Travelling north on the Newell Highway and following the start of the Kidman Way, we stopped at Ardleton to see the Kelpie statue. They have a free camp ($2 for 12 hours of power) by the railway station. This is now on our list of places to stay at. The park has toilets, water and playground. Ardleton is famous for being the first place to breed kelpies. We had lunch here and then kept going to Forbes Wheogo Park.

We have stayed here before and it is on the banks of Lake Forbes. We were surprised that it wasn't already full, as we arrived after 4pm – we had a back up plan of a local caravan park – but it wasn't needed. There were a number of vans here already, and we found a great spot, that we think was a spot we have stayed in before, and set up for the night.

The next morning we continued up the Newell Highway to Parkes. We have a favourite bakery in Parkes that we like to stop at and Peter gets his coffee fix and we usually get either fresh bread rolls for lunch, or something sweet like chocolate eclairs. As we are doing short drives each day – 1 to 2 hours, we have time to explore some villages and towns we would otherwise drive through. We walked up and down the street looking at the shops and more particularly the architecture. We drove down the road to a park just north of Parkes to make lunch – fresh bread rolls and ham.

After lunch we continued though Peak Hill – we couldn't believe the progress of the new open cut mine – to Dubbo. We had chosen two camp sites for the night, when we pulled in to the first, we knew this would be a perfect overnighter. Terramungamine Reserve is located on the Burroway-Dubbo Road off the Newell about 10k north of Dubbo. It is a large area with trees and is situated beside the Macquarie River. There are toilets and picnic tables. The best part though, was the old Aboriginal Grinding Stones.

Terramaungamine was where we had to make a decision about which road to take home. We could have gone via Lightning Ridge – but time was now short as we had a date to get home and we prefer short driving days to long ones. We could have gone via Goondiwindi, which we did only last month, or we could have gone via Texas, a new route we haven't been on; or via Tamworth and Warwick – a road we have been on many times. We decided on the later, so at Coonabarabran we left the Newell Highway and headed north-east to Gunnedah, and Attunga.

Attunga is not far from Tamworth. Attunga is Aboriginal for 'high place' and was the name of a farm operated by John Brown in the 1840's. Attunga was gazetted a village in 1847. It is now a small farming area with limestone quarrying.

We headed south to Tamworth and stopped at Coles to get a few groceries before heading north again on the New England Highway to Guyra. We have driven through Guyra numerous times, usually on the way to the Tamworth Country Music Festival, and while they were having their potatoe and sheep festival. Imagine our surprise to find out that Guyra is famous for its tomatoes!! The name 'Mother of Ducks Lagoon' also sounded like a great place to visit. The lagoon now has mostly gone. Historically it was a large lagoon supporting many birds and wild life, and was part of a volcanic crater. Once European settlement arrived part of the lagoon was drained for grazing land. In later days some bright spark thought it would be good to put a golf course on the lagoon so more was drained. Today, what is left is protected under the NSW National Parks. There is a dump point and toilet block, and a little further north along the park is a great exercise areas – one of four in the town.

Guyra was proclaimed a village in March 1885. It is situated at the top of the Great Dividing Range at an elevation of 1330m. Guyra was the name of one the early properties in the area, Guyra Station, established in 1835 by Alexander Campbell, and is an Aboriginal name meaning either fishing place or white cockatoo. The first settler in the area was explorer John Oxley who moved to the area in 1818. The area is predominately sheep, and dairying, and the soil is perfect for potatoe growing. Tomatoes …. well we spoke to the locals at the Bowls club – where we had a wonderful meal – and apparently tomatoes are grown in hot houses in the area. We did see one on the way north.

Wallangarra is a great place to start or finish a road trip when one is travelling this way. A free camp maintained by the Lions Club, we stay here a lot as it is only 3 hours to home.

Home again we are already planning the next trip.