After what felt like a lifetime of lockdown, in reality only a couple of months so nothing like what many others have had to endure, we finally hooked up the van and hit the road again.

There were still restrictions in place and we were only allowed to visit regional New South Wales so plumped for Crowdy Bay National Park which is less than two hours north of us. National parks do not allow dogs and as we are dogless at the moment after the loss of dear Monty, it seemed a good idea to go while we had the chance.

There is a choice of campsites in the park and we chose Kylie's Beach because it was the quietest. The unmade road in was pretty bumpy as the park had only just reopened and as we bounced along we remembered that the fires of 2019 had swept right through this area. Mile after mile of blackened trees stretched out on all sides, gum trees were sprouting new growth but many other trees were gone forever.

By the time we entered the camp area we realised this could be quite depressing so chose to set up in a space with some recovering trees around it. There were very few birds, absolutely no parrots which is very unusual and no koalas. Fortunately kangaroos, echidna, bandicoots and the odd snake were still in evidence.

Crowdy Bay National Park has a sensational beach which was just metres behind us. The area was mined for the rutile in the sand from 1959 to 1982. Local conservation groups campaigned and eventually it became a National Park.

The part we were in was called Kylie's Beach because the writer Kylie Tennant had a hut in the bush where she wrote after the second world war. The hut featured on the promotional material for the area but was sadly a victim of the bushfires too, there is a plan to rebuild it but all that was left for us to see was a fenced off area of concrete stumps. I have added a picture of how it did look and hopefully will again one day.

Enough of the depressing stuff and on to the positives. Much of the bush is growing back and there were some wonderful walks in the park. We took the headland walk along the cliff tops which was glorious with spring flowers blooming and magnificent views of dolphins swimming down below. We returned by the forest walk which was greening up nicely after a very wet summer last year. The campsite was great too, very quiet with just long drop toilets that were kept spotlessly clean. The sunsets were wonderful, if a bit alarming because they did make the bush look like it was on fire again.

Back along the bumpy road was Crowdy Head which is a lovely town, well worth a visit. The lighthouse has a red pane of glass which is to warn sailors about Mermaid Reef. If a boat is in a location where the light is shining red, they are about to hit the reef.

A few kms further we came to Harrington which initially looks like a new development, but we pressed on through that and came to the main town which was beautiful. A 3km breakwater was built in Harrington to fend off coastal erosion and it was dotted with little plaques in memory of local characters and made an excellent walk. 

We were only away for a few days but it was great to be able to go somewhere at last. Since then the borders have opened and we have been able to get down to Melbourne to meet our second grandson Rowan for the first time.

 

 Last year we were unable to spend Christmas with Zoȅ, Shaun and Ted because most of the coast between New South Wales and Victoria was on fire. This year Australia is in the grip of La Nina so we drove through driving rain for the whole journey, all 1100kms of it. 

 Permits were required to get into Victoria this trip because of a recent covid outbreak in Sydney's Northern Beaches and it took about an hour to get through the checkpoint. Once we were back in NSW after Christmas the outbreak got worse and it was taking Victorians up to 9 hours to get home across the border before it was closed again, so we were lucky to get away with just the one hour of queuing. 

  The weather cheered up and Christmas with the Kents was delightful and felt like a return to normal times at last. It was over all to quickly as our permits ran out on Boxing Day and we had to get back into NSW before turning into pumpkins.

The plan was to take a slow trip back in the caravan avoiding large towns where we might encounter the lurgy so we headed for Henty, just over the border for our first stop. There was only one other van in the showground which was a shame because it was a great place to stay, right in the middle of grain country. A railway line ran alongside but only the grain trains and an occasional huge train carrying steel from Melbourne passed by so they did not bother us. Apparently it was a bumper grain crop this year which helped make up for the disastrous drought years leading up to 2020. 

Country towns always find something as their claim to fame and Henty was proud to promote itself as 'The Home of Headlie's Header', a farming invention from 1914 which had a whole museum dedicated to it. The town itself sat in the shadow of huge grain silos and was incredibly clean and tidy, as well as pretty empty. We stayed for a couple of nights and visited nearby Culcairn, again very neat and tidy especially the palm trees along the centre of the high street, and Holbrook, home of the Big Submarine. 

After leaving Henty the gradual journey towards home then took us through Wagga Wagga and Cootamundra (birthplace of Don Bradman) to Murrumburrah-Harden. The twin towns share a fabulous showground and have an astonishing number of churches. The first Light Horse Regiment recruits for World War 1 were signed up here and there was a beautiful memorial featuring a small bronze of Bill the Bastard, a difficult, powerful horse whose rider rode him into the battleground to rescue comrades who had lost their mounts. 

Bill the Bastard carried four men back at a time and has been commemorated, not only with the small bronze statue but with a massive one which for some reason was locked away in a gallery. I could not find out why because everything was shut for the Christmas holidays but managed to press my face up against the door to get a look at it. If you want to know more, Bill has his own website billthebastard.org 

 Boorowa was not far from Harden so we took a trip there. Supposedly home to the Superb Parrot (we didn't see any) Boorowa is an attractive town with beautifully preserved original shopfronts and interiors and some excellent cafes. There was also a weird pub that did not seem to want to serve anyone but we didn't let it spoil the visit. 

After Harden we headed for Canowindra along the Olympic Highway, so called because it was the route for the Olympic torch ahead of the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, through Young. It was cherry season so the road was studded with signs for cherries, cherry pies, cherry jam, cherry ice cream - you name it, they make it out of cherries in Young. Canowindra sounded nice because it had an historic town and hosts the annual hot air balloon festival. It actually turned out to be a bit of a let down. The showground was not great, a willy willy (little whirlwind) attacked us as we were putting our awning out, so that was fun, and we were fascinated by a couple who set their caravan up two metres from the wall of the toilet block and sat in their deckchairs facing said toilet block the whole time we were there. 

 The town was historic as promised but also shut. The shops all had signs in the windows saying call if you want us to open and whinging about what a tough year it had been, why not just open then while there were tourists around? There was quite a flashy looking new Museum of the Fishes but on closer inspection the fish fossils it contained all came from Morocco, how odd. We decided to give the pub a miss for dinner as there were several flies stuck to the menu in the window and opted to move on the next day.

Usually I can find something to like about a town but the next place we chose to stop was Geure and it was horrible. The disused racecourse was advertised for camping but it was very creepy and had, wait for it, communal showers!! I think Ian was up for it but I wasn't so we drove straight back out and carried on our way towards Gulgong, where we have stayed before and knew would be good. On the way the road took us through Wellington, the ice capital of NSW. Opposite the correctional centre was the biggest solar farm I have ever seen, it was staggering but I am amazed there are not more solar farms in a country that gets as much sun as we do.

Gulgong was fab as usual and a great place to spend New Year's Eve. The showground is beautiful but the showers were closed using covid as an excuse, a bit cheeky as the price was the same as usual. Last time we were in Gulgong the Holtermann Museum was nearing completion and this visit it was open. It contained the photographs of Gulgong and Hill End commissioned by Holterman in 1872 using the money he made from finding a record breaking gold nugget. Two buildings that feature in the photos were restored as the site for the museum, the photos were fascinating, well worth a visit.