Today was one of our longer drives at approximately 420kms so we had an early breakfast, packed up the car and we were on the road by 7:30
Heading south along the New England Hwy we were saddened to
see how dry the country was. This area
has been in drought for quite some time.
We have spent a fair few holidays in the Granite Belt so we really
noticed the difference.
Coming into Stanthorpe we noticed a lot of traffic ahead and wondered what was going on. As we got closer we could see that the service station on the Highway was a collection point for water. There were two big double water tankers and many cars, trucks and utes with a 1000 litre caged water tank. I had read that the Qld Govt was giving some water to Stanthorpe residents, so we hoped that the water was free.
Further south, we stopped at Wallangarra on the Qld /NSW border. The old train station here has a quirky story. When it was being built, the Qld and NSW “powers that be” could not come to an agreement as to the design of the station building. As a compromise, the building was built in each state’s traditional style. So the Qld side has a rolled bullnose verandah roof and the NSW a flat sloped roof.
As this is the state border there is a sign marking the fact.
Queensland, however, has gone slight one up and erected a HUGE sign to remind the “Blues” where they are.
Travelling south our next stop was the Information Centre at
Tenterfield, I picked up a few brochures and guide books for our forward
travels. We have been to Tenterfield a
number of times before so did not look around town.
On to Glen Innes. We
had not been here for many years, so we did take some time to drive around this
pretty tow. The main street is lined
with lovely heritage buildings that reflect the past prosperity of the
area.
In 1872 tin was found nearby and the town grew from a population of just 350 to around 1500 by 1875. In 1884 a rail service from Sydney arrived and this further contributed to the prosperity of the town.
I did have to laugh at one very large building on the main street… Kwong Sings Merchants. As an importer/seller of Chinese goods myself, it is funny to see the practice was profitable way back in the 1800’s ?
Travelling out of Glen Innes toward Armidale, we saw more evidence of recent bush fires, including one that had crossed the highway.
We stopped at a roadhouse at Guyra for lunch. We have found that when you see a road house full of trucks, you know the food has to be good. As usual, we were not disappointed. We shared a “works” burger meal deal. – Burger, chips and a drink for $13.99 The burger was huge and came with a dinner plate full of chips and we chose a “Solo Lemon” can of drink. It was more than enough for the two of us. On our way out, we noticed there was a bin to put any empty bottles and cans in. The roadhouse was saving all the 10c refunds to donate to the drought appeal, so of course, that is where our empty soft drink can went.
After lunch, we went for a drive around town. There was a picture in the guide book of a local attraction called “Mother of Ducks Lagoon” We guessed that, in these drought conditions, it would not look as lush as the pictures, but we were shocked to see that there was almost no water at all in it.
From the Guidebook
Lush and green
Now dry as a bone 🙁
Back on the road toward Armidale. The guide book said that this area is renowned for its Beef and Lamb. Looking out over bone dry empty paddocks as far as the eye could see, it is no wonder our meat prices are high at the moment.
At one point we noticed a very large farm under cover off to the left. We wondered what it was. The guide book told us that this area is also a very large grower of glasshouse tomatoes and we are sure that is what we had seen. A bit of “googling” found this article on the project.
Our next stop was Armidale.
It was again too hot to get out of the car and walk around too much (
the car told us we have been at 40 degrees for most of the day. The hottest it
read was 41.5)
So we drove around Armidale and thought it reminded us a lot of Toowoomba, with
lovely wide tree lined streets.
Armidale has many cathedrals and large buildings that again reflect the
prosperity of the New England area. I
knew that Armidale is a University town, and there are a number of prestigious
schools with lovely heritage buildings.
We reached our final destination of Tamworth at around
3:30pm.
Tamworth is well known as the centre of Country music in
Australia and hosts the huge Country Music Festival each January. Driving around town we saw the Hall of Fame and
the Golden Guitar. Not being country
music fans much, we did not stop at these attractions.
We found the Woolworths to buy a few provisions for dinner
and found our AirBnB accommodation in a quiet suburban street.
Our home for the night is “Magnolia on Oak” The home is a well renovated home and we had a comfortable night, but as an AirBnB there were not the inclusions we normally have. To be fair though we got exactly what is outlined in the AirBnB listing. Extra bedrooms, the laundry, the garage and the back door to the yard were all locked off. There was a small fridge with nothing in it except 2 small tetra packs of milk. One thing that was missing was a coffee table to put our drinks on, so I used a “hotel hack” I had recently seen online. Use the ironing board ? It worked perfectly.
After a busy year, were both ready for this break.
We packed our bags the night before (the Engel fridge had
been on for a day to chill down well) and were ready to go after breakfast.
A quick stop to fill up the fuel tank and we were off to
Warwick.
Heading south on the Bruce Highway, we turned off to the D’Aguilar Hwy, through Caboolture, Woodford and on to Esk. We stopped at Esk for a stretch of the legs and swapped drivers.
With the recent bushfires, there was a lot of smoke haze around Esk, I have downloaded the Australian Bushfire app and am confident that ( at this stage) we are not driving near any major blazes. Leaving Esk and heading up the range we saw the first signs of the devastation that the fires had brought. The normal scenery of green Aussie bush was transformed into a black desolate expanse. ☹ We saw farm trucks and tractors completely burnt out in the paddocks where they stood. Fences along the roadside were reduced to a length of wire strung between intermittent charred remains.
We notice lots of sawn tree stumps on the side of the road
where large trees had been felled and we assumed the trees must have been so
badly burnt they posed a danger of falling over the highway so were
removed.
This fire would have been the outer edge of the Pechey fires which began over a month ago and raged for many days. We noticed one very large tree fallen in a paddock and was still smouldering.
Stopping in Toowoomba for lunch, we found the shopping centre where there is an Italian restaurant that we had an Entertainment Book voucher. We parked the car and found the entrance to the shops.
What a surprise… at the entrance there was a community library. Somewhere comfortable you could just sit and read.
Piccolo Papa is an unassuming café/bistro in a suburban shopping centre, but WOW the meals were amazing. We chose two pasta dishes and shared them. Spaghetti & Meatballs and Garlic Prawn Pasta. Tiramisu for dessert finished off the meal to perfection.
A short one hour drive through very dry farmland brought us to Warwick. We found the information centre and got some pamphlets for our forward travels and had a drive around the town. Unfortunately, it was too hot to get out of the car and do much walking – 38C at 2:30pm, but a drive around showed us what a lovely town Warwick is, with lovely wide streets and sandstone buildings. A statue of T J Byrnes sits proudly in the centre of the intersection of the two main streets of Warwick.
TJ Byrnes was a Qld Premier in the late 1800’s … read more about him here
I hope Mr Byrnes had a good sense of humour because for now,
in Warwick, he has been dressed as Santa ?
We found our AirBnB and checked in around 3:30pm.
“The Cottage” in Warwick is a lovely little 2 bedroom house just outside of the town centre. It had everything we needed for our one night stopover. The fridge was stocked with bread, butter, jams, eggs and milk. A good selection of teas and coffees were available on the bench in the kitchen.
We spent the afternoon relaxing in the aircon, and looking
over the information I had picked up earlier.
A fun fact we learnt
was that an incident in Warwick was responsible for the formation of the
Commonwealth Police Force. In 1917 Prime
Minister Billy Hughes was visiting Warwick spruiking his plan for national
conscription. This was not a popular
plan and he was not well received. One
fellow threw an egg at the PM and the local police refused to arrest the man
citing that he had not broken any QLD laws. Hughes’ frustration and anger, led
him to establish the Commonwealth Police Force.
(The Commonwealth Police Force was amalgamated with the ACT Police and the
Narcotics Squad in 1979 after the Sydney Hilton Hotel bombing to form the
current Australian Federal Police)
We had a good nights sleep on the comfy queen bed, ready for the next day’s
drive to Tamworth.
!! Updated to include costs !! Scroll to the bottom of this post
This year we are road tripping through QLD/NSW country. We are travelling down to see family outside of family Wollongong for Christmas Day,
And to avoid the coastal crowds, where accommodation costs
would be prohibitive,
we have elected to travel down the New England Hwy and come back up the Newell
Hwy.
Our itinerary is as follows
20th December – Dicky Beach to Warwick (via Toowoomba for Lunch)
21st December – Warwick to Tamworth
22nd December – Tamworth to
Pokolbin(Hunter Valley) for 2 nights
24th December – Pokolbin to Wollongong for 2 nights
26th December – Wollongong to Canberra for 2 nights
28th December – Canberra to Cowra
29th December – Cowra to Leura (Blue Mountains) for 2 nights
31st December – Leura to Mudgee
1st January – Mudgee to Dubbo for 2 nights
3rd January – Dubbo to Moree
4th January – Moree to Toowoomba
5th January – Toowoomba to Brisbane (Southbank) for 7 nights
12th January – Brisbane – Dicky Beach
We have organised the car with our Engel fridge and packed pantry and food from our fridge at home. We have booked AirBnB and self-contained accommodation everywhere, so we will be self catering for most meals.
We do have the “Entertainment Book” which we will use vouchers for meals for Lunches at nice restaurants we want to try. This means we will have light evening meals at our accommodation.
The first couple of days are covering ground we have seen a few times before, so one night stops are in order to be able to be in Wollongong by Christmas Day to see family. Our first 2 night stay is Pokolbin in the Hunter Valley. I have chosen a hotel/resort in the centre of the action and hope to do a bit of wine tasting and eat some good food.
Update… We have been away a while now so my costs sheet has some meaningful data. I am very happy with our budget thus far. We did not bring a lot of food from home as we don’t have a lot of room in the car. We have a 40L Engel Fridge, another little 10L fridge and we have pantry items in two standard zip-up supermarket “cooler” bags. Staying at AirBnB accommodation should mean we will be provided with some breakfast provisions as well which keeps the food costs down. When we do eat out, I want to try and choose restaurants that we have Entertainment book vouchers. We are EXTREMELY happy with how economical the car is. We had been told the mileage was good, but we have not really looked into it in detail. The following spreadsheet will update automatically as I add to it, so please check back often 🙂
Our last day today. We had booked the 10:00am ferry back to River Heads. We packed our bags and had breakfast then put our bags in the luggage room ready to go on the luggage truck for the ferry.
We went down to the Jetty and had a walk along the beach and waited for the ferry. The tip back to the mainland took 45 minutes and we were shuttled from the barge up to where the car was. We headed home, stopped at Tiaro butcher for some meat and then Gympie for lunch. We were home at around 3:00pm
We unpacked, sorted out the washing and Mick answered the loads of phone calls he had while we were away. Another early night and the holiday is over 🙁
Today we are off on our 4WD adventure with a full day tour called the Beauty Spots tour.
We went to the breakfast buffet for an early breakfast, as we have to meet the 4WD coach at 7:50 in the village square. We packed a small back pack with a change of clothes ( we wore our togs), beach towels and water bottles.
We met our guide Peter Meyer and we were off. Not long into the trip the bus decided it was too hot for the AC and it decided to just blow hot air at us 🙁 NOT GOOD!! Peter arranged to swap the bus over when we got to the eastern side of the island. We got to the eastern beach and Peter gave us the option of going 5 minutes up the beach with him, or to stay where we were and have a paddle in the ocean . We all decided that the water looked great. There were some nice little trees up on the dunes that provided some shade too. I lay my towel out under a tree and had a relax. We also had a paddle in the water up to about knee height. It was lovely and cool without being cold. It was not long, and Peter returned with a bigger 40 seater bus and we headed further up the beach to Eli Creek.
We had a nice morning tea and a good 40 minutes at Eli Creek. Eli Creek is a fresh water creek that runs at about walking speed from the middle of the island to the sea. We walked about 100m on a boardwalk and then down stairs into the FREEZING cold water. You could then float all the way to the sea. I didn’t get right in as it was too cold for me. So I just walked down the creek.
It was nice to have a hot cup of tea after the cold water.
Back on the bus and we traveled further up the beach to see the coloured sands and the wreck of the Maheno.
Travelling south again we were given the option of a 15 min joy flight in a small plane that takes off and lands on the beach. Mick and I decided against that and stayed on the bus, although 6 of our group did the flight and said it was great views.
Our lunch stop was at the Eurong Beach resort and was a full buffet lunch.. After lunch we traveled back through the forest and stopped for a walk through the forest on a boardwalk, while Peter explained the different plants of the forest. Back on the bus and on to a 90 mins stop at the most beautiful Lake Mackenzie. Lake Mackenzie is also fresh water and was crystal clear and beautifully warm. It was lovely just floating around.
We had afternoon tea of tea, coffee and biscuits again and we were delivered back to the resort at 4:30pm.
After a nice warm shower and we decided on an early dinner and watched some TV before turning in after a lovely day.
With absolutely NOTHING planned today we had a super lazy day just hanging about the resort. Breakfast, a swim, a nap, lunch, another dip in the pool, and another nap was about the extent of the day 🙂
Tonight we had our included sunset prawn platter and a bottle of wine at the Jetty hut on the beach. We walked down at 6:40pm and collected our platter and watched as the sun set over the water. Thanks to a slightly cloudy day, we were treated to a pretty magnificent coloured sky.
A bit of TV and we were ready for our full day sightseeing tour tomorrow.
