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.

We're off again

 We have had a fabulous time at my Daughters place and enjoyed seeing our grandsons again as well as loving every minute we have spent with my youngest daughter , her partner and her family too.

We finally set off again last Thursday 7th Feb and stayed for one week at Boyds Bay Caravan Park on the south Tweed Coast. We met up with my sister in law and brother in law as we hadn't seen them properly for a while. It was great to relax and catch up.

We are now at Tenterfield showgrounds for one night and there aren't a lot of people here - about 6 of us. It rained a little this afternoon and it is very cool - have had to get my jacket out of storage again. Not really a lot else to say except we are working our way down through NSW and then into Victoria and across to Adelaide then up the middle to Darwin and then home again for Christmas 2013.

We are not hurrying as we are not sure yet where my sister will fly into from England, it could be either Sydney or Melbourne, she is coming in April and might be bringing my other brother with her. Will have to let my brother know in Melbourne know or we will all be on his doorstep without him knowing.

The end of the first Journey

I know I haven't posted for a while but we have spent some time in places that we have visited before. We left Cania Gorge and went to Bargara to stay at the Absolute Ocean Front Tourist Park where some friends of ours are permanent residents. We stayed there for three and a half weeks and then carried on to Kingaroy for one night and then Killarney for one night (where we stayed at a friends place) and then onto Darlington Park (where we originally started off. We stayed there for four nights and we needed to put the annexe up so we could sit outside as the flies were atrocious for this time of year. While we were there our gas and electric water heaters decided to stop working and our outside light went on the blink, and we had something wrong with the water again as we seem to have lost some - although we don't have any leaks.We decided to go straight to my daughter's at Ormeau from there so we could get these things sorted out and do some alterations to the caravan that we want. We will be here until the end of January when the boys go back to school. We are down at Kirra beach for a week in a unit that our daughter organised for the first week of the boys school holidays and having a lovely time. We were playing Putt Putt at 8am this morning which is an improvement on the first morning as that was 7am. We have also been for a bike and scooter ride up the front and for a Gelati icecream which we promised the boys last night. They are now in the pool for an hour with Poppy while I make burgers for dinner and get the lunch ready. then I think we are going on the beach if the rain keeps off. One minute it is sunshining and the next the clouds roll in and it starts pouring down. Never mind we are all enjoying the time together. Have taken pictures of them on the beach but not downloaded them yet as they are on my phone. Will post some pics later.

Our Home "The Retreat Daydream Caravan"

We have been in Bargara for the past two weeks visiting some dear friends of ours and generally doing nothing but Fishing (Stephen) and making cards and crocheting (me) but my daughter asked me to post some pictures of the caravan. So here they are, these were taken just after we picked it up in July 2011.

Our home on wheels

View of the back end of the caravan

View of the front end of the caravan (to the right is the toilet and shower and to the left is my desk)

The sink and stove

The dining area

My desk

Cania Gorge

After Carnarvon we went to Cania Gorge near Monto, I know we have been there before but it is  a beautiful place and there were a couple of things that we didn't do last time so thought we would do them this time. One was Kroombit Tops National park and the four wheel drive day to "Beautiful Betsy" the airoplane that crashed in 1945 and was only found in the 90's by a national ranger doing a burn off. All six people on board were killed and some of their remains were still there when the ranger found the wreck. These were taken away to be identified and given back to their families for burial. After this they left all the wreckage there for people to see, it is kind of eerie and you feel like you are in a graveyard. Stephen also wanted to do the 22klm walk across the top of the montain range to the lookout over the Dam ( I wasn't going on this one) supposed to take 8 hours, he set off at 6am and was back at 11.30 glad that he had done the walk but said it was boring not an animal in sight. Never mind maybe next time as I'm sure we will be back it is so peaceful there.

Kroombit Tops Lookout

Spectacular Views

This view was to the side overlooking Gladstone

"Beautiful Betsy" crash site

Part of the back end of the plane

Details of the Bomber

One of the engines

The 22klm walk across Castle Mountain

Another view of the walk

The Lookout

One view of the Dam

A view over the surrounding area

A boab tree (just thought they were unusual)

A Bunyip at Mulgildie - Bunyips are mythical Australian creatures that live in swamps

The Fern tree Pool which is a walk at Cania Gorge - sadly the run offs were dry and this stream although still beautiful was not as spectacular as before, but we took a friend with us who had never seen it before and she enjoyed the walk.

Carnarvon Gorge

The next day we decided to do a small walk in Carnarvon Gorge - only about 7klms. We set off early approx 8am and took water with us and left morning tea in the car ready for when we got back. The scenery is beautiful and I was amazed at how many Palm trees there were and the loamy sandy soil that you walked upon. We didn't see much wildlife except for a wallaby and some of the birds. We did the Moss Garden walk and it was enough for me.

Carnarvon Gorge main track

Carnarvon Gorge main track

The Moss Garden Pool

Stephen at the Moss Garden pool

Moss growing on the walls  of the pool area

Looking above the pool area at the Moss Garden

The base of a tree on the way back from the Moss Garden

Carnarvon

We travelled to Takaraka Bush Resort at Carnarvon across 18ks of dirt road. We had to take it easy as there were several creek crossings and some had water in them, but not a lot. On this road we came upon a young family with a little boy 2 years old who had burst a tyre( the car not the little boy) and they couldn't get their jack under the car to raise it so we stopped to help. The little boy looked hot so as I had some ice pops in the freezer we sat and had one each. We then carried on to the resort, situated on the side of Carnarvon creek and booked in to a wonderful looking camp whose amenities are spotless.We spent the rest of the first day looking round the surrounding creek area and visiting the camp lookout at sunset

The entrance to the camp, you still have one creek crossing to do.

One of the locals

Carnarvon Creek at the back of the camp

Carnarvon Creek

Sunset from the camp lookout

Another view of sunset from the camp lookout