A 2 Week NSW Road Trip - Part 4

Opps. Better late than never.  Some how this and another post did not get scheduled correctly so they are a bit late but oh well.

On our final leg of our trip we camped at one more free stop and one paid camp ground.

Our free stop was at Uralla Fosicking Area.  It was a popular stop beside the creek and on the day we arrived was almost at capacity unless you really didn't mind sleeping on a slope and in the long grass. We managed to find a nice secluded spot that was hard to spot unless you got out and looked which is why I think it was still free.
If we wanted we could have hired gold panning equipment from the local information center but we decided to give this a miss in favour looking at some of the other local attractions.

Uralla is not a very big town but it has an amazing little museum that is well worth visiting.  The McCrosinn Mill Museum  is run by volunteers from the local historical society and has some amazing artifacts and art on display.  I really enjoyed learning about the gold mining in the area and they have a Joss House (Chinese Temple) set up with original artifacts on display.

Sadly for Hubby the New England Brewing Co was closed on the day we were there so he could not sample their wares but one of the brewers saw him peering in the window and allowed him to come in and purchase some to take away which was very nice of him.

While we were at the camp ground Jessie found a huge bone someone else's dog had left behind.  Clearly it was too big fo a dog to break into and while we had a sledge hammer with us we were unsure how long the bone might have been sitting in the sun ripening the marrow in side (pewwwww no thanks) so we just let her chew on it for a bit.

Until she decided that she also needed to roll on it for the next 5 minutes and get that nice smell all over her.  Time for another swim little dog.

Our final spot was at Gordon Country right neat the Main Range National Park.  Prior to Having Jessie we used to stay at the national park but now we stay at Gordon Country when we head in this direction.  It is a huge operating cattle property and because we were there off peak we had an entire camping area to ourselves.

During our stay we had thunderstorms roll in in the afternoon but we have a big tarp that we can sit under when it is really hot or wet so we were fine.  On the day we left it was fine in the morning but there were already clouds on the horizon so we left not long after the dew had dried and headed for home.  It turned out to be a good thing as that afternoon the town nearby Warwick was hit by severe storms where roofs were torn off houses and trees were knocked over.

During our entire 2 weeks away we covered 3000 km and spent $500 on fuel, about $100 on eating out and attractions and $80 on accommodation. We took most of our food from home and just topped up supplies as we went.  So we are quite pleased about the cost of the trip.  
All of the places we stayed had clean amenities and were well looked after but one thing I did notice were that there are some lazy people out there.  Even when large skip bins were provided some people still decided that beer bottles and cans should go into the fire pits and at most places we collected rubbish that was not ours from around our campsite.  Strangely it was worse in the places where you had to pay to stay, perhaps people feel they are paying to be picked up after (grrrr).  We spoke to the caretaker at Gordon Country and he said that some people just do not think of the impacts on other people and animals (farm and domestic) and do not consider how much effort it takes to keep a large property clean.  Apparently after Easter each year they hire 2 - 3 backpackers for a week and all they do is pick up rubbish for 8 hours a day.  Sigh.... 

Before we move to New Zealand this year we are hoping to do another road trip right down to Victoria and South Australia but there are a few things that have to fall into place before that can happen.