A 2 Week NSW Road Trip - Part 1

Hubby and I have just been on a 2 week road trip around some of NSW.  After the last 6 months of waiting for our house to sell, moving and all my University work we really needed a break.  We did just go to New Zealannd back in September but we had so much to do while we were there it was not much of a break.  My great aunt lives in Sydney and hubby's aunt, uncle and cousins are just north of Sydney and with our planned move to New Zealand we wanted to make sure that we caught up with them before we left.  In addition Hubby is about to have surgery on both hands over the next month and a half for severe carpel tunnel and will be unable to drive for a while and will be off work for some time so we decided to get the road trip in before that happens.

Jessie came with us travelling on the back of the ute in her dog crate.  She loves travelling and having her in the crate is much better than having her in the back seat puffing down my collar.  Her crate measures approx 1.8m x 75 cm has a corrugated metal roof and steel mesh sides.   She has plenty of room to move around and it allows us to stop and go and do things leaving her in the shade for an hour or so if needed.  We do not leave her that often but a small bone keeps her very happy while we do other things.

Jessies crate allows her to look through the back window or up the side around the cab.

On our first day took us south to northern NSW and we called in at Kyogle where we caught the end of the farmers market where we picked us some herbs, salad greens, corn and sourdough bread.  We had intended to stay at a free campsite near the town of drake but a huge storm front was sweeping up the country and the campsite was a bit washed out so we decided to keep on driving.

In the end we covered over 700 km that first day ending up on the first day to a lakeside camp ground just south of Tamworth at Chaffy Dam.  It was a lovely spot with hot showers, flushing toilets, heaps of room, plenty of room for all water sports and at $5 per night per car very affordable.

We had lovely weather and look at the view I woke up to from my bed.

Good morning Jessie

From out spot by the dam we took a day trip to Nundle to visit the Odgers & McClelland Exchange Store.  Oh what a treasure trove in such an amazing historic store that began trading in the 1890's
I picked up some enamel pie dishes, a bottle brush, some tea and a fancy new garden spade that will remain unused until we get to New Zealand.  There were lots of other goodies I could have purchased but as we had limited space I decided that the heavy bulky spade was a priority over items more easily posted as they have online shopping.

Check out the receipt from 1936

I also called in at the Nundle Woolen Mill but only had a quick look as it to was far too tempting and I do not need any more wool so had to restrain myself.  If you are ever in this neck of the woods make the effort to call in and if you aren't it is a great drive in so it is worth the effort.

As we travelled we saw lots of old amazing buildings like the old barn and grain silo in the photo below well I think that is what they were. Ideas anyone?

Whenever we travel I am always interested in the native animals that we encounter.  Australia is so blessed with exciting and unusual wild life and amazing birds in all range of colours.  As we were driving we saw road signs advising of the potential animal sightings you know the ones.  We passed one for wombats and I got a little excited telling Hubby how we might see one.  He laughed and told me they mainly come out at night and if I saw one it would probably be roadkill.  Sadly he was right, we passed a number of dead ones on the road.  Then a minute late he asks me if I saw the one on the side of the road.  I hadn't and he told me he thought someone had tied a wombat toy to a road side marker.  But I made him turn around just in case as I had never seen a wild wombat before.

And there he/she was, a real wombat on the side of the road.  Sadly it looked like he had a case of wombat mange but it was still very exciting to see one in the wild.

Our third stop was a lovely forest campground in the Chitchester State forest just north of a really interesting town called Dungog.  We had the entire campground to ourselves so Jessie was free to roam as she wished not that she ever goes far as she likes to be involved in what ever we are doing.

By this time we were feeling well and truly relaxed, lots of reading was getting done, there was crochet around the campfire, games of cards and majong were being played and things were going smoothly.  But we were about to hit a little speed bump in our trip, nothing we could have planned for or easily avoided.  But more about that tomorrow.