With Gary & Dennis

Having been on the road for the best part of nine weeks, we thought we had better give an update on our travels.

Leaving the Riverland in mid-April, we’ve had stays at Bordertown, Beaufort, Berwick (just realised they all started with a “B”!), Rosedale (near Sale), Lakes Entrance, Eden, Cobargo, Broulee (near Batemans Bay), Nowra, Corrimal (near Wollongong), Stockton (near Newcastle), Gunnedah, Narrabri, Lightning Ridge and Tamworth.

As you would expect there have been several highlights as we’ve been travelling through SA, Victoria, and NSW.

We’ve bought fresh seafood at Lakes Entrance (king prawns), Eden (crayfish) and Nowra (fish fillets). We’ve had great meals at too many pubs to recall them all.

Whilst free camping behind the Cobargo Hotel we tried to support the pub by having our evening meals in the pub. On Tuesday evenings they put on a free trivia night and on Wednesday nights a free Bingo session. We participated in both and came out well in front having won a carton of soft drink, $20 cash, a box of Cadbury Favourites and a hair dryer!

Whilst at the Nowra Showgrounds Dennis got locked out of the Showgrounds. Having called the afterhours contact number (that didn’t answer) he eventually called the Police to assist. He didn’t venture out after dark in Nowra again!

This HMAS Albatross Fleet Air Arm Museum was another highlight on our travels.

In the early 1970s, a small energetic team of Navy volunteers started collecting relics from around HMAS Albatross, including five obsolete RAN aircraft, which became the foundations of the Fleet Air Arm Museum, established in 1974.

The Museum collection increased exponentially through the 1980s and the growing band of volunteers raised over $8m to build the Museum facility at the gates of HMAS Albatross, near Nowra, now the home of the Fleet Air Arm.

Today, the RAN Fleet Air Arm Museum is one of the largest regional aviation museums in NSW, containing over 30 aircraft and numerous aviation artefacts tell the story of Australian Naval Aviation and the development of the Royal Australian Navy’s Fleet Air Arm.

Lightning Ridge could only be described as “different”. Everywhere you looked there were mounds of spoil which had been sifted for opal. We did the Red, Green, Yellow, Blue and Orange Car Door tours. The Orange Door tour took us to some unique drinking holes in the scrub, with novel names such as “The Club in the Scrub”, “Sheepyard Inn” and the “Glengarry Hilton”. We also came across a restoration project. Are there any members game enough to take it on?

This John Murray gallery was another quirky thing we saw in Lightning Ridge.

John Murray arrived in Lightning Ridge as a city artist, his first impression of the landscape was the simplicity and clarity of his surroundings. Over the years he has been trying to capture the energy and beauty of such a seemingly “nothing there” landscape.

Unfortunately, due to copyright provisions, I couldn’t take photos of his artwork inside his gallery. The two images below are painted on the external walls of his gallery. He has a penchant for painting emus within his paintings.

His paintings encompass great colour and light. The outback is a graveyard of historical remnants and examples of human endeavour which John has been able to capture in his paintings. In many ways his paintings pay tribute to these pioneering souls both past and present.

If you would like to see examples of his paintings, please visit his website.

In Tamworth we stayed at the Tamworth Paceway. Each morning we are woken with the pounding hooves of horses being trained.

The “Tamworth Classic Fire Engine Club” happens to be housed less than 25 metres from where we’re setup. The Club was established in 2017 and has approximately 30 members all involved in restoring old fire engines. They are just as passionate about their club as we are about ours.

Unfortunately, due to a combination of homesickness and some minor soreness niggles, we had to cut short our travels and return home much sooner than we had hoped.

We’re now home, having returned via Dubbo, Parkes, and Bathurst.

No trip to Parkes is complete without visiting “The Dish”. It is amazing to recall how instrumental Parkes was in providing communications for the moon landing in 1969. It is hard to comprehend that this occurred on July 21, 1969, some 54 years ago! I recall being in Grade 6 and watching the TV that my teacher had brought into the class room so that we can see the landing.

Moving on to Bathurst, what do you do when in Bathurst? You do laps of Mount Panorama race track, clockwise and anti-clockwise.

Dennis and I drove a few laps, and then the wives had their turn driving some laps. Initially they were not interested in having a drive, but that all changed once Dennis and I had driven our laps around the track.

Even though we were restricted to driving the speed limit (60 km/hr), it was an experience never to be forgotten.

When you are watching the “Great Race” on TV, it does not give you an indication as to how steep and narrow the race track is as it winds up, down and around the mountain. You need to admire how a Supercars driver can complete a lap in race conditions in just a few seconds over TWO minutes. Driving at the posted (60km/hr) speed limit, we took almost EIGHT minutes to complete a lap! So, we would have been lapped THREE times by the time we finished our lap!

In the windy parts of the track going up and down the mountain, maintaining 60km/hr was virtually impossible, whilst on the straights it was extremely difficult to keep to the 60km/hr speed limit.

Even if you are not a “revhead”, you need to experience driving the Mount Panorama race track in Bathurst. It is most definitely a bucket list thing to do.

Gary and Dennis