Day 8 / Saturday (Lawrence – Sydney, 639km, 397miles)
July 26, 2010 by admin · Leave a Comment
The longest day of all.
Totally over the driving by this stage, but had one hell of a great week! 
Never thought I’d say this, but it was actually nice to get back to Sydney!
Take me to: <- Day 7
Day 7 / (Inverell – Lawrence, 258km, 160miles)
Breakfast in the motel room, then south to the little town of Tingha and then another 10km south to Green Valley Farm.
The owners of this place have done an amazing job of creating a “theme park on a farm”. There’s a heap of different rides, plus animal petting and a great museum of Australian memorabilia.
We spent close to 3 hours there.
Then, it was on the road to Glen Innes and on to Grafton.
Along the way, we found Border Falls, where we stopped for about an hour to shoot some photos.
We got to Lawrence around 4:30.
Take me to: <- Day 6 | Day 8 ->
Day 6 / (Lightning Ridge – Inverell, 405km, 251miles)
July 26, 2010 by admin · 2 Comments
In fact, those baths were so good, we went back for another hour before we left Lightning Ridge this morning.
Then, it was back on the road for the 4 hour drive to Inverell, another mining town. This time, it’s sapphires.
Along the way, we passed through such must-see destinations as Collarenebri, Moree, and Warialda. Oh yeah baby, New York and Paris got nothin’ on this roadtrip!
We rolled into Inverell around 3:30 in the afternoon. We got into our motel room, Max switched on the TV and found WWE and hasn’t moved since.
Me… I’m enjoying having wireless internet access for the laptop, so have caught up on FB, and on writing this blog post.
Tomorrow morning, we’re going to check out Green Valley Farm which is a tourist attraction for the kids before we head off for Lawrence, our final pre-Sydney destination.
Take me to: <- Day 5 | Day 7 ->
Day 5 / Wednesday (Bourke – Lightning Ridge, 309km, 192miles)
July 26, 2010 by admin · 2 Comments
We decided to sleep in this morning, and it proved to be a good decision. Sunrise was a bit of a non-event (I sneaked a peak out the window around 7am).
We grabbed some breakky and hit the road early for the trip to Lightning Ridge, Australia’s opal capital.
We got into Lightning Ridge about lunch time and went straight to the tourist info centre. I figured after 5 days on the road, Max needed some play time.
We booked in for an underground tour for 3pm, but went for a self-guided tour around town by ourselves first.
I took Max up to the Artesian Baths to show him what they were all about, and confirm that we would indeed come up for a dip after dinner. For those who are not aware, the Great Artesian Basin is a huge body of fresh water which lies underneath 30 per cent of the Australian mainland. It holds an incomprehensible 8,700 million MEGAlitres of water! That’s 8.7 x one million x one million! That’s a helluva lot of water!
It’s very heavily laden with minerals, so you wouldn’t drink it, but it makes a great source of water for livestock and crops in the outback.
And it’s so hot when it comes up out of the ground, that they have to COOL IT DOWN for the baths! They keep it at a constant 40 degree Celsius year round.
Anyway, enough of the history lesson.
We did the underground tour and learned all about opal mining (and the fact that Australia produces 96% of the world’s opal!).
We had dinner, then went to the baths and spent about 90 minutes soaking in the warmth. It was absolutely gorgeous!
Take me to: <- Day 4 | Day 6 ->
Day 4 / Tuesday (Tibooburra – Bourke, 359km, 223miles)
July 26, 2010 by admin · 2 Comments
Up at dawn again, and headed back up to Sunset Hill, which contrary to what you might suspect, was actually a great spot for viewing sunrise as well, due to its 360 degree view.
However, much to our disgust, the clouds were sitting on the horizon preventing a colourful start to the day.
Again, frozen stiff, we headed back into town to grab some breakfast, have a shower, pack the car, and hit the track.
And ‘track’ it was! The first 40km or so was quite rocky, and rough going. After that, the road got marginally better and we were able to pick up a bit of pace.
The first leg of today’s journey was the 260km to Wannaring.
We were doing quite nicely, until about 50km out of Wannaring, a suicidal emu decided to pit his chances against a solid object travelling at 120km/hr. I saw him coming and hit the brakes, but I had too much momentum and he was too stupid to turn. Instead, he just ploughed into the right front panel and completely knocked the driver’s side mirror off the car.
Just great.
A bloke in a 4wd travelling about 5km behind me stopped and Scotch-taped it back on.
I can’t see out of it, but at least it will keep up appearances until I get back to Sydney.
After a counter lunch at the Wannaring Hotel, we hit the road for the second leg…. Wannaring to Bourke, another 192km.
We rolled into town with no accommodation lined up, having spent the last 2 days totally “off-the-air”… no mobile phone, no internet.
We got turned away from the first 3 motels we enquired at.
The fourth one was able to give us their very last room, just as the local tourism office was ringing them asking them about availability!
Talk about ‘close call’.
Take me to: <- Day 3 | Day 5 ->