Central and North-east NSW

As we moved on up through New South Wales, our next stop was at Condobolin where we found free camping with hot showers at Gum Bend Lake and stayed for a week visiting local sights like Utes in the Paddock on a side road between Condobolin and Parkes.

Instead of using the highways we travelled north on sealed back roads up through cattle and then cotton country.   The back roads are good though narrow with almost no traffic. The disadvantage is coming up behind huge cotton harvesting equipment doing 15kph and using the whole road. There’s no chance of passing until they find a place to pull over.

We passed through little townships like Tullemore and Albert where we had lunch at the Rabbit Trap Hotel. They have a huge trap ready to mount on the roof of the hotel, but as it weighs about 1 ½ ton, they need to get the roof structure strengthened first. The project has been underway for a couple of years already – things don’t move very fast in the country!

1910 Regal Roadster at Gunnedah Rural Museum

Crossing the Mitchell Hwy at Nevertire we turned east through Warren where we could hear the cotton gins running all night as we camped by the river, then through Gilandra, Coonabarabran and Gunnedah were we looked through the big rural museum which had a wide range of displays and is well worth a stop if you’re travelling in the area.

 We turned north again on back roads through to Manilla and joined Fossickers Way north to Inverell, Glen Innes and Tenterfield. As well as Manilla, we saw roads to Wyoming and Bolivia, and Texas is not far up the road – you can see the world without leaving Australia! By now we were into much greener country, driving gently winding roads through green valleys and well wooded hills –quite a contrast to the flat plains not far behind us.

Ready for the parade - they wanted everyone
 in our group dressed as hippies!

After Tenterfield it was up over the Great Dividing Range to Casino where we met up with old friends and drove our Mokes in the Beef Week parade. The theme was Aussie icons so there were quite a few Edna Everidges, jars of vegemite, and large native animals. 

Over the hills towards Casino