We left behind the delights of the Trundle Abba Festival preparations and carried on our journey toward Parkes. The road we were following was called The Bogan Way and stretched from Albert to Bogan Gate. For my English readers, bogan is a derogatory term used in Australia for a person who, shall we say does not aspire to finishing their education or having any kind of career and lives in a messy house lowering the tone of the neighbourhood, you get the picture. Bogan Gate itself is a lovely little town but we found a house in the middle with a front yard full of junk and surmised that must be where the bogan lives! 

As we rolled into Parkes the rain started to pour down, it was freezing too and the owner of the campsite boasted that the temperature was set to drop to 4 degrees overnight, we haven't experienced cold like this since we moved to Australia so had to head into town to buy fleeces. Suitably rugged up we set off to explore. Australian towns are very good at providing information centres and we have got into the habit of going there first so we don't miss anything. We had come to Parkes to see the famous radio telescope but discovered at the information centre that it is an Elvis town! Needless to say Parkes hosts an Elvis Festival but there was Elvis memorabilia everywhere. Just when I thought it couldn't get any better I discovered that this part of NSW has a trail of decorated rhinos, a bit like the elephant trail in London a few years ago and, you've guessed it, Parkes has an Elvis rhino! 

It was still lashing down with rain when we went to bed but the sun was out the following morning although it was very chilly again because Parkes is pretty high up. We set off to check out the radio telescope which was a delight. The telescope features in the film The Dish and was made famous because of its role in the Apollo missions. The Parkes telescope was the one communicating with the Apollo 11 moon landing at the moment when Neil Armstrong stepped on to the surface of the moon. The visitor centre was excellent and free to enter, there was a $6 fee to see three films about space exploration and telescopes which was well worth it. Then there were plenty of interactive displays and lots of information suitable for those of us who do not have a physics A level.

 The dish itself was sensational, so massive it was hard to imagine how it could turn if there was any wind about. We gazed at it for some time then bought a coffee and gazed at it some more, I cannot recommend this visit highly enough. 

 Apologies for the lack of blogging but we have just returned from a three week, 2700km trip. The original idea was to meet our friends Tim and Virginia in Parkes then go on to one of our favourite spots, Willandra National Park with them for a few days. It suddenly dawned on us that we could make a much longer trip of it (we haven't really got our heads around this retirement lark) as we would be driving a long way so we may as well see some more places while we were out that far.
We left in glorious sunshine on 24th April and headed off along the Golden Highway through the mining areas in the Hunter Valley. It's a dangerous road this as it passes between army firing ranges flying red flags warning not to enter - possibility of death, then as soon as that danger was passed signs appeared on the roadside advising when the next mine blasting was to take place.
We breathed sighs of relief as we got through unscathed and took in the scenery. Beautiful, green countryside with rolling hills but every few kilometres a huge open cut mine created a blot on the otherwise perfect landscape. The view soon changed to manicured, emerald green horse pastures as we passed some of the best known racehorse training stables and studs in the country.
It was time to look for our first coffee stop and Denman fitted the bill perfectly, it is a smart town with plenty of cafes in amongst the hunting supplies and cattle food shops. Coffee over we drove off refreshed through a massive area of blackened trees and fields, it went on for about 45 minutes and we found out later it was caused by a huge bushfire in February that destroyed 17 properties which is a lot because the farms out here are huge so the houses are a very long way apart. 

Next town was Dunedoo. In stark contrast to Denman, Dunedoo looks like a town barely hanging on by its fingernails, it is boosted a little because people visit there because of the name but it really looked to be struggling. By now we were driving alongside a railway line dotted with grain silos every few kilometres and we spotted an occasional, very slow grain train.
We were heading for Ballimore which turned out to be a tiny, friendly little place where we could park the caravan free overnight opposite the pub in return for buying a drink. The locals were very keen to make us welcome and were happy to help when we asked where the nearest Anzac Day service would be the following morning. An elderly man gave us some very country directions to nearby Gollan, which nobody but a resident could possibly have followed so another chap said he would be passing on his way there in the morning and we could follow him.

 Anzac Day is a big deal here and almost everyone attends a dawn service, we were in luck though, the service we were being taken to was at 11am. Our guide turned up as promised and we followed him to a field in the middle of nowhere with a war memorial and a little community hall which had not changed much since Mabel and Garry were there in the old photo hanging up inside. The hall was buzzing with ladies laying out trays of cakes and giving out cups of tea, they would not accept a donation but insisted we tuck in. The service itself was attended by about 80 people from the surrounding farms (there was not even a village here) and we were invited to join them after for a barbecue! 
Tempting as the offer was we decided we ought to press on through Narromine and Dubbo to Albert and the Rabbit Trap Pub - we had been looking forward to this. It was a bit grim actually and the pub was the only thing there but we couldn't go past this stop.

 We got out pretty sharpish in the morning and pushed on to Trundle which was great on a number of levels. First it had the widest street I have ever seen and the hotel boasted the longest wooden balcony in New South Wales but, best of all they were gearing up for their annual Abba festival.

 It was incredible, the festival happens every year and goes on for several days featuring Bjorn Again, The Kransky Sisters and many more. While we were chortling at the Abba shop window displays we discovered that last year the festival brought half a million dollars to the town! It was a fantastic example of what a resourceful council can do to support the small businesses that might otherwise find it tough in a country town. 

 Once we had made the decision to move Down Under I started to devour as many books based in Australia as possible to try and get a bit of a feel for the place.
One of my favourites was Salvation Creek by Susan Duncan which is a true story about the author's search for a place to call home after a series of devastating tragedies rock her world. She stumbles accidentally on a place called Pittwater and her writing gives such a strong sense of the place, I have wanted to see it ever since. 

 The opportunity arose this week as we needed to take the car down to Sydney to pick up a new battery for the caravan and realised Pittwater was quite close to where we were going.
Pittwater is in Sydney, to the north and backs on to Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park. Some small towns which face onto Pittwater, such as Clareville have nice bayside beaches and can be accessed by road so are very expensive because they are an easy trot into Sydney's central business district. Further along are Whale Beach and Palm Beach (where Mick Jagger has a home) which have surf beaches on one side and bay beaches on the other thereby satisfying both a hankering for dangerous pursuits and a safe place for children. 

Susan, our heroine, finds a home on Pittwater itself which is a large expanse of densely wooded bay with houses dotted among dozens of little inlets which can only be accessed by boat. 
Church Point is approached from Mona Vale Road and is home to a shop which serves as a general store, cafe, bar, restaurant, post office and drop off point for deliveries. The residents leave their cars at Church Point and hop into their tinnies (small aluminium boats with outboard motors) or take a water taxi to their waterside properties.

 These homes are not great for a daily commute into the city because the boat element adds a significant amount of time to the journey, but they are sensational if you do not need to do that or are lucky enough to be able to afford a weekend home.

 Most houses have their own deck and jetty and reach right down to the water's edge where it is incredibly peaceful at night with only the sounds of the bush behind and the water in front. During the day it is a busy stretch of water and ferries take tourists around who, probably like me are fans of the book and want to have a nose at where the author moved to.
It was a gorgeous spot, I can see why it became her salvation.

 The most recent trip was more a case of Rabbitts in the air than on the road, or Rabbitt to be more precise because I flew down to Melbourne on my own. The main purpose of the jaunt was to go wedding dress shopping with Zoe but, to my delight, she treated me to a ticket to the Grand Prix as an early birthday present! 

The prices of flights to Melbourne from Newcastle vary enormously depending on the time of day and on this occasion the 6am flight was $65 while the 10am one was $220 so, an early start for me then! I needed to be there sharpish to get to the Grand Prix anyway so left home just after 4am for the fifteen minute trip to the airport. 
The flight was mainly full of yawning but excited men and boys wearing Ferrari, Red Bull or Mercedes caps. All the passengers looked a bit shell shocked by the exceptionally early start and there was plenty of snoring on board as we touched down in Melbourne before 8am.
Albert Park is a lovely setting for the race and we found a tree to sit under beside the circuit, which was handy because it was a very hot day. Apart from the fun of the race, we were very pleased to see The Roulettes, an air display team who were unable to perform when we were at the Avalon Air Show because of the wind. An excellent day all round.

 The next day started early too as we had to drive to Wonthaggi where Zoe was completing her final block of teaching practice. So we set off at 5.45am and arrived at Shaun's parents' house just before 7.30. Zoe went to work while I borrowed her car and set off to explore.
My first stop was Phillip Island which is a beautiful part of the world. It was smaller than I expected and I very quickly found myself in Cowes which is the main resort.

 The coast around here is absolutely gorgeous and made more dramatic by the fact that it is very windy so the sea is invariably pretty lively, crashing against the rocks and long, golden beaches. There are penguins here but the organised viewing at the Penguin Parade is very expensive and I didn't manage to spot any for free.
I took a detour on the way back and had a look at Phillip Island Racing Circuit, or rather I would have done if it were not all fenced and hidden in such a way that you cannot see much unless you go through the visitor centre and pay the, rather steep, admission fee.

 By now you will have realised that I am a bit of a tightwad so will have guessed that I didn't do that! From what I could see it looked as though the circuit would be pretty blowy even on the nicest of days, a bit like Silverstone, very different from the Albert Park experience of the day before. 
I set off the next morning to explore the coast around the Wonthaggi area. It really is sensational, especially Cape Paterson which is very popular with surfers. I watched one group around the Eagle's Nest and they seem to spend very little time actually surfing, they just bob around in the water for ages and ages waiting for the ideal wave.

 I saw loads of waves which looked perfectly adequate to me but, in the whole time I stood there (about 20 minutes), only one surfer saw a wave he fancied and surfed it. 

 After a quick look at Inverloch which is an attractive, smart town with a very pleasant waterfront, I met Zoe from work and she drove me back to the airport. I arrived home exhausted but pleased to have seen yet another delightful part of this beautiful country.

 The journey home from Melbourne started with a detour to Sunbury to pick Monty up from the kennels. He was mysteriously fluffy and sweet smelling, I am hoping that a bath was just part of the service they offer and not necessitated by something dreadful Monty had done. 
We drove back across the Macedon Ranges to the Hume Highway and plumped for Oxley as a place to spend the night. Oxley is very near Glenrowan, the site of Ned Kelly's last stand, and sits on the banks of the King River. 

We have been choosing our free or very cheap overnight stopping places on line and this was an example of one that was not quite as advertised. The online post had told us we could free camp on the riverside at the Stan Allen Reserve (they always have names like this and are usually down the road from the Bert Pickles Bridge and the Fred Pratt Memorial Bowling Green). When we found the reserve we were greeted with a large No Overnight Camping sign which pointed out that we could camp at the Oxley Recreation Ground. This was a kilometre or so away from the town centre and not within walking distance of the pub which was not a problem for us because we had supplies with us, but would have been a bit of a nuisance if we were relying on the pub for our dinner. I am sure you are thinking, 'what was to stop you driving back?' and the answer is, you do not always want to leave your caravan unattended at a free camp.
The recreation ground turned out to be fine however, with several other caravans staying overnight too. It was a little irritating that the shiny, new toilet block was locked while the, clean but very grotty and old toilets were open for our use because there was a $10 honesty box charge for staying there and, while you grin and bear creepy toilets if you are not paying, I for one expect something in return for my ten bucks.
However, there was entertainment in the form of a little showjumping ring where a constant stream of riders turned up to practice so we had our own little gymkhana to watch.
We spent a pleasant night and found out the following morning that we could have reached a section of the riverbank within the recreation ground and camped there but we will know for next time.
Back on the road again we detoured through Rutherglen which is a beautiful little wine region and passed by Murdering Hut Creek and Police Paddocks Road (goodness knows what went on there!) We were looking to stop in Belangalo State Forest for the next night but could not find it on any maps even though it is pretty big. It was the site of several murders by serial killer Ivan Milat and it seems to have been renamed, a bit like 10, Rillington Place. As we didn't know what it had been renamed as, we stopped at Gunning as we had on the way down, instead. 

 Once home, we were cooking some sausages on our balcony when some very cheeky kookaburras turned up. We fed them a couple of bits of bacon, which was a mistake as now we can't leave anything unattended on the barbecue. If you look closely at the picture you will see they had brought two of their mates as back up!

 The next stop on our journey down to Melbourne was Jingellic. To get there we drove down to Gundegai where we joined the Snowy Mountains Highway, we love this route which takes us through Batlow and the apple growing country. The landscape is usually very green on this trip but, even this high up, it has been a very long, hot, dry summer so we drove past mile after mile of brown fields and paddocks broken up by huge lush green apple orchards covered in gauze. I thought this was to keep the bugs out but apparently it is to shade the fruit from the harsh sun. It is hard to believe that snow falls not far from here in winter. 
After passing through Tumbarumba we reached our destination for the next couple of nights. We have stayed in Jingellic before and, although it is a bit of a detour from our route, it is well worth it. The camping is free with the pub on one side of the camp area and the Murray River on the other. It was very busy in the evenings but emptied out during the day as caravanners moved on only to be replaced by a new set of Grey Nomads the following evening. The Grey Nomads are a huge community of retirees who have sold their homes and spend their lives on the road spending their childrens' inheritances and we see them everywhere. They seem to vanish during school holidays (many of them do house and pet sitting duties) then they reappear as soon as the kids go back to school. They are very proud of their Grey Nomad status and often have statements on the back of their vans like 'Bruce and Darleen. Adventure Before Dementia.'
 We spent two days in Jingellic and did pretty much nothing but read and paddle in the Murray, it was great. It was so beautiful I could have stayed for much longer but there was a purpose to our journey so we had to press on. The next job was to drop Monty at the kennels we had booked. This was in Sunbury and took us into Melbourne a different way, across the Macedon Ranges which were massive, undulating plains (brown again). Sunbury itself was a funny place, it is just a commutable distance from the city and there are endless new estates being built. All the new builds are huge McMansions as they are known in Australia, supposed to show wealth by sheer size alone, taste does not appear to come into it. 

Anyway, we arrived at Shaun and Zoe's and managed to park the caravan outside much to the horror of some of the neighbours, and the next day met up with Shaun's parents at the Avalon Air Show. 

 The air show was sensational, I had expected the flying displays to go on for about an hour then the rest of the time to be spent looking at planes but no, the flying went on for the entire duration of the show. It was staggeringly impressive, I can't begin to say what I enjoyed the most during the daytime it was that good. However, there was a real highlight when darkness fell.
We had seen a glider being towed up at dusk and forgotten about it when suddenly it lit up in the night sky. It was covered in LED lights and performed a beautiful balletic dance perfectly matched to music while shooting fireworks out of the ends of its wings until it reached the ground, unbelievable! You will have to take my word for it because I couldn't get a decent photo.
Next day was the engagement party which was a huge success. Congratulations Zoe and Shaun! 

 We hit the road again a couple of weeks ago on our way to Zoe and Shaun's engagement party in Melbourne. It is about 1100km to Melbourne from Port Stephens so we decided to make a bit of a road trip of it.
Our caravan is set up to enable us to free camp so we did a bit of research and picked out some likely spots to spend the night on the journey. These free camps are usually either country pubs which allow people to pitch up out the back and use the loos in return for the purchase of a couple of beers or a meal, or small towns that recognise allowing free camping will bring a bit of much needed business into the area. 

We had chosen Gunning as a potential stopover as it is right by the Hume Highway which is the freeway linking Sydney and Melbourne so off we set. The first part of the trip usually gets extremely tedious around Sydney where a connecting motorway tunnel seems to be taking an age to complete. At the moment traffic whizzes down the Pacific Highway then grinds nose to tail around residential streets to the north of the city before joining the freeway again. It must be awful for the people who live there as well as being dangerous, we often hear on the news that a lorry has lost control and ploughed into a front garden so the sooner the tunnel is finished the better for all concerned.

 It was not too bad today however and we made pretty good time, arriving at Gunning in the late afternoon. It is always a good idea to have a couple of alternative stopping places in mind when choosing a town for the first time as they are not always quite as advertised but Gunning was fine. The free camping spot was the recreation ground (home of the Gunning Roos rugby team - or football as they call it here) and there were about 6 other caravans already there. It was also home to a group of Crimson Rosellas, a new bird for me to tick off in my book. 

Gunning is a good example of a small town that has been left for dead by the construction of the new motorway. The old Hume Highway passed through the centre of the town bringing business to cafes, hotels, pubs and shops but now the road bypasses Gunning so the town council have been very forward thinking in encouraging visitors by offering a free place to stop. We had dinner in the pub, where they do a cheap special every night (tonight's was $10 schnitzel) and almost all the other caravanners were in there eating too, and it was the same with the coffee shop the next morning.

 Like many Australian country towns, Gunning has beautiful old buildings. The garage was my favourite closely followed by a tiny museum which had a notice on the door giving a phone number to call if we wanted to look around. Gunning also has something I am starting to learn to expect in every small town - a mysterious art shop that never opens but has strange artwork inside when you peer through the windows. This one had various pieces made of milk cartons and old broadsheet newspapers (?) 

 Back at the recreation ground we saw a sight which demonstrated how an Australian man will always find a use for a ute, this time for exercising his horses!