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Benaraby to Mudgee

Damian — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 07:30:22 +0000

We are back in Mudgee!

Over the past week or so we have been looking at our options, where to live when we finish our travels. Due to severe weather warning in Qld, we decided to shorten our trip and head back to Mudgee. We are now looking at setting up our home again here in Mudgee, but now we are back we are also sad that we are not on the road any more. Who knows, may be we will take a few shorter trips while we still have the bus. For now our priority is to start organising a home and settle back into a ’normal’ life style.

Thanks to all the wonderful people we met along the way and those of you who have been following us via this website, in particular we thank Brad and Sue Dowling from Bridgetown Caravan Park along with John and Vanya Talbot and girls for thier special efforts to accomodate and entertain us while in Bridgetown. Sorry we missed you Michelle and family, hopefully we can get back up for a visit soon.

Duaringa to Benaraby

Damian — Wed, 28 May 2008 10:40:03 +0000

We left Duaringa this morning, our mail didn’t arrive yesterday so we stayed a day longer than planned. We stopped in Rocky to get some milk and bread before heading south. We are now in a rest area north of Miriam Vale just out of a little town called Benaraby.

The weather changed this morning, it started to drizzle rain, according to the forcasters the rain will increase tomorrow and not clear for 6 days or so. Looks like we’re in for some wet weather. We haven’t done any thing exciting since last post, just taking it easy and enjoying the weather.

Ilfracombe to Duaringa

Damian — Sun, 25 May 2008 06:50:13 +0000

We haven’t travelled all that far over the past week but have stopped at many towns. One of the more interesting stops for us was at a town called Sapphire, as the name suggests, Sapphire and its neigbouring town Rubyvale are gem mining towns about 50km west of Emerald. Sapphire/Rubyvale are small communities with basic facilities, general store, fuel, post office, pub, caravan park, and many merchants selling gem stones and attractions for the tourists. We stayed for 2 nights, venturing out to Rubyvale and well beyond in the car. The tracks we drove varied from bull dust to rocky, narrow, up mountains and cross river beds. The drive was interesting in itself but many people live in these remote areas, they have very basic accommodation without power or water, they are there simply to mine their acre or so plots for gems. Back in town there is a dump point for toilet waste and also water supply, in the early afternoon these areas are busy with locals filling water drums and emptying their porta loos.

We did try our luck at fossicing, we didn’t find anything of value but we had a great time digging up many colourfull stones and some fools gold (pyrite).

We arrived in Duaringa this morning, a small town of about 250 people, we will be here for a couple days while we wait for mail to arrive. Duaringa has a great free camp area, the park like area would be around 7 to 8 acres, they have a nice pond area and play grounds for the kids. There are water taps spread around for the convenience of campers, bbqs, toilets and hot showers. Everything is free of charge however it is requested that you make a gold coin donation to help the community off set the cost. The maximum stay is 48 hours so we hope our mail arrives on time.

More photos from this leg of our trip can be seen in the album Photos / Australia – Our Lap / Ilfracombe to Duaringa

Longreach to Ilfracombe

Damian — Sun, 18 May 2008 10:02:44 +0000

We decided to move this morning, we had a great time and met many nice people, mainly travellers who share the same camp area. We ate plenty of yabbies, the boys were a little reluctant to them at first but now they quite like them. One of the guys we met had a small tinnie, he invited me to go for a run one morning to check his yabbie nets, he used the tinnie to set the traps down river where less people fished, on return he asked would we like the yabbies, he said he can’t eat them due to having an allergy to crustations and his wife had a freezer full already. How goods that, use his boat and traps and feed up on the catch!

We picked a bad day to leave, yesterday the fuel price was $1.689, today it was up 3 cents. O’well, can’t drive far without it. We also filled our water tank before heading off out the road, our first stop was at a little town called Ilfracombe, it is only about 25km out of Longreach, we spent the whole day there checking out the place. Ilfracombe town is like one big museum, the main street consists of a Pub, Post office, a cafe, school, public pool and a heap of free exhibits. Many of the original buildings still stand in the main street, they have been turned into museums and are full of antique and old wares to tell the story of the town’s history. The park like strip along the rail line side of the main street is lined with old tractors, trucks, cars and farm machinery. Even the local pool and artesian spa are free to use, they are modern and well kept but un attended, kids can only use the pool if with an adult. It was a little cold for us to go swimming, however the water is heated in the spa. The town water supply comes from an artesian bore, the water is clean and clear, requiring no treatment. They do have the water tested regularly to ensure its safe for consumption. The water in the bore is around 80 Deg C.

Later in the afternoon we drove out of town to a rest area for the night and will head off again tomorrow.

Photo of Ilfracombe can be seen in the album Photos / Australia – Our Lap / Longreach to Ilfracombe