Armidale

We left Tenterfield on Friday morning and travelled to Armidale where we booked in at the Pembroke Tourist and Leisure Park for four nights - it is the dearest here ($36 a night) but is a beautiful camp over a large area where you can drive around and pick your own site and the amenities are clean and look fairly new.

Whilst here we have visited "Suamarez House" (pronounced summerez) this is a National Trust Property and the downstairs was built in 1888 and the upstairs added in 1906. Lots of original furniture still there and the farm and outbuildings are enormous too

"Suamarez House"

We also visited the "Visitor Information centre" in Armidale where we were taken on a Heritage tour bus of all the highlighted points of the town whichs was free, we also stopped at the art gallery and had time to walk around and look at all the paintings. Whilst on this tour we visited "Booloominbah House"  which was built by the white family in 1888 and is now part of the New England University.

"Booloominbah House"

We also visited the nearby town of Uralla as we wanted to visit a place called "Wooldridge Recreation and Fossicking Reserve as this is a free camp for caravans. We were not too keen on the area as there wasn't a level site left for the caravan, most of the area was on a slope. Whilst we were in Uralla we visited the lookout and Fred Ward's (the Bushranger Captain Thunderbolt) grave.

Captain Thunderbolt's grave (Fred Ward)

We are leaving this caravan park tomorrow and going to Dumaresq Dam, this is only about 30minutes away but it is a free canp and when we went to look at it on Sunday it looked ok. So we are going to chill out for a couple of days and then get back on the road.