Stage 3 – Underway at last!!!
FRIDAY 12 September
We are now at the Lightning Ridge Hotel/Motel/Caravan Park. Arrived about 3:15pm and managed to book the second to last available place. Apparently there’s a whole gang of Morris Minor enthusiasts here, taking up half the places.
Last night we stayed at the Coonamble Riverside Caravan Park – a council-owned site, run by Pat and his missus, a lovely couple who will be heading out in a clockwise direction to do their own Big Trip after spending a couple of months with their family in Dubbo. Their set-up is quite something. A huge blue-painted coach, complete with 2 trailers!!! One housing a very tasty looking trike. They call their rig NIKOOL TUOBA 2 (work it out!!!) We did yet more shopping – we keep finding more things that we need. Hopefully, with some more shopping when we got to L Ridge, we have now all we need – Oh, except for a decent near-side wing mirror for Betty – we should be getting that tomorrow. The road to Coonamble had seemed very rough, and Jeff thought it would be a good idea to have the tyres checked for balance as there seemed to be more wheel-wobble than there should have been. Flippin’ good job he did. The tread on one of the front tyres had actually separated and needed replacing, so Jeff got both front tyres replaced.
The previous night we stayed at a very small roadside caravan park in Merriwa. Met a lovely couple called Bev and John who have said that they will try to get over to Hobart for the Wooden Boat Show in February.
We’ve seen a fair bit of wildlife on the road – unfortunately loads of dead kangaroos and a few sheep too. We spotted a good sized group of emus (about a dozen), lots of birds – galahs, sulphur-crested cockatoos, kookaburras, crested pigeons, crows or ravens (not sure which), magpies, butcher birds. I caught a very brief glimpse of what I think was a small goanna and a bit later a tiny lizard. We’ve been looking out for live ‘roos, but ain’t seen one yet. As we go northward the weather gets better, it’s very warm now, which is great after the several days of rain in Sydney and Newcastle. The wattle growing alongside the roads is really beautiful – trees and bushes covered in yellow blooms. Talking of yellow – saw several fields of oilseed rape, the flippin’ stuff gets everywhere.