Barcaldine

On the way to Barcaldine we stopped at Alpha. We met the amazing Laura, who showed us her amazing fossils and petrified wood.

She also told us the story of the Shakespeare hotel,  owned by a Mr Shakespeare, that moved along with the developing railway, becoming the first pub in Alpha.  The main street was named after it, and the rest of the streets after poets. But then the Shakespeare Hotel moved on to Barcaldine.

Lovely Barcaldine. We really liked it here, so much we stayed an extra day.
There is a lot to see here. Naturally there is the Tree of Knowledge. Quite dead, but still, a source of inspiration.

We went to the Australian Workers Heritage Centre, which was thought-provoking. I think we could all benefit from a bit of history now and then.  How far we've come, and how much we could lose. And it also has a great turtle :-)

Lara Waters is a great spot to visit, or stay.  We just visited. It has a lagoon with kayaks, a hot spring pool and a cold pool, and great facilities.

Garry and Ben in cold pool

 When we were getting into a kayak, my knee went crack.  Hum. I got off the kayak and put ice on it, but Ouch. No time to see Dr, off to Winton on the next day.  But in Hughenden I went to a Dr. A small tear in my medial ligament. Not too bad, but somewhat limiting. And a bit painful. Ah well. 

Gem fields

We were really looking forward to the gem fields near Emerald and decided to stay in a park in Anakie. It turned it to be a lovely park with its own lagoon and gem fossicking facilities. 

Ben and I bought 2 $10 buckets of dirt and spent quite a few hours pottering about searching through our sieves and finding heaps of small sapphires. We felt pretty happy with our efforts. 

The real challenge though was to find a good sapphire on the fields, so we all headed off on a tag along tour, where all the equipment was supplied, in a productive area, with an expert there to explain and, as it happened, supply an endless stream of sarcastic banter ridiculing us new chums. Keith was certainly a character. 

It was hard work.  We dug off the topsoil,

 

shoveled up the 'wash' layer into buckets,

  carted the buckets to the rotary sieve, sieved off the dirt, carted the buckets to the Willoughby, washed and vibrated the wash, 

flipped the sieve out as a pancake,

 and picked out the sapphires. 

Or not, as was mostly the case. But you can see the iron stone in the centre, which is where the sapphires would be, if there were any.  By 2pm it was 32 degrees, and we all stopped looking! 

Turns out the buckets you buy in parks are salted with extra sapphires so you enjoy yourself and don't feel ripped off. You might find something good that was in the original wash, but most wash doesn't have them by itself. 

But we did get a few cutable sapphires, including a star sapphire I'm proud of because I shoveled it out myself. We left a few to be cut with Keith's much less cynical brother, Dave, who had a shop full of lovely gems. Where a very lovely ring was bought :-).

Can't wait to see how our sapphires turn out! 

Carnarvon Gorge

Glorious, wonderful, peaceful Carnarvon Gorge. We stayed a week, and it is heaven.

We stayed at Takaraka, which is pretty much the only place you can stay in a van where you can get showers and power, and some wifi. No phone reception so we were pretty much off grid - the wifi was ok for emails, but not for loading photos or doing blogs. It was such a lovely place, like staying in a National Park but with great facilities. Carnarvon creek runs along one side and there are platypus to be spotted early in the morning or in the evening.  Happy hour every night and roast dinners three nights per week.

Of course, the nearby national park is the main attraction, and it is wonderful.  There are a number of shorter easier walks, and we did these first to get our hiking legs ready.  Mickey's Creek gorge was spectacular, and we enjoyed the short walk to the aboriginal art at Baloon cave.

We did a super-fantastic night walk with a guide and saw 3 types of glider - yellow bellied, which are like flying teatowels with tails; greater gliders, of which you could really only see their red eyes; and a very active squirrel glider scurrying about like a little white mouse at the top of a tree. We also had excellent views of several platypus at the main creek crossing. The special night spotting torches the guide used were excellent for letting us see the animals without disturbing them too much. Needless to say, I didn't get photos :-).

The visitor info centre was excellent, and there were always kangaroos and whip tailed wallabies around there.

The main walks are up the gorge, and are best tackled as one long walk of 14km. There are many creek crossings, with a big one right at the beginning.

There are longer versions, but 14km was long enough for us. You head out to the furthest point you intend to visit and then zigzag back going up the various side canyons. Our walk included the Art Gallery, Ward's canyon, the Ampitheatre, and the Moss Garden.  It started raining while we were in the Moss Garden, so our last 3km were a bit soggy, but we were pretty hot by then so we didn't mind much.

The Art Gallery

King ferns in Ward's canyon

Entrance to Ampitheatre 

Leaving Ampitheatre 

Pool at Moss Garden

We considered the Boolimba bluff walk, but decided against it, given its numerous stairs and ladders. But we drove out to Sandstone, the new 'bush' camp spot to get the panoramic views.  Spectacular!

A wonderful, peaceful place to visit.

Roma

Roma was a bit of a surprise. We greatly enjoyed learning about the history of the gas industry there, especially through the night sound and light show. The first gas found just flowed out for five years, until Roma installed gas street lights. It was such a marvel that people came from miles to see them. And then the gas ran out, just 10 days after they were first lit!

The other highlight was the free tour of the massive cattle sale yards. Experienced retired cattle men took us through the yards, up on the top, and explained the whole process, including the auctions, the huge scales, and the electronic tagging of the animals. Fascinating!

Lightning Ridge

Hi All. I'm a bit behind in my updates on where we are, but there you go. That's what a week without reception will do for you :-). Anyway,  Lightning Ridge was certainly an experience.

It is definitely a mining town, and there are old diggings all around.

The caravan park was all gravel, although they did have a few grassed areas near the camp kitchen and laundry, and we had trees around our site.

We enjoyed Mel and Susie, the nightly bush poet comedians, who tried valiantly to get Ben up on stage, but my boy is made of stronger stuff and resisted, even with the lure of embarrassing daddy. Garry was very grateful.

We also enjoyed our dip in the hot springs, 40 degree water straight from the artesian basin. The pool is a large round concrete pool with metal step seats that is open 22hrs a day for free.

We went on a couple of tours, with the highlight being Chambers of the Black Hand. This was an opal mine where the miner had discovered he could carve in the sandstone layer above the opal bearing level. There are hundreds of carvings all within his 50x50m claim area. Unmissable.

We also marveled at Amigo's castle, assembled rock by rock by Italian immigrant Amigo, based on his childhood memories of playing in a ruined castle. Again, entirely on a 50x50m claim.

We did have a go at noodling, but we had the feeling that any chip of colour had been swooped up and put in little bottles to sell to tourists at the weekly market. Very high priced little bottles given they aren't jewelry quality, but I guess they have to make a living and mining is expensive.

Dubbo

After a very busy interlude at home over the Easter school holidays, we are off again. We started this six month leg of our travels with a few days in familiar territory. We had intended to start with a visit to friends in Orange, but that wasn't to be this time, so we headed straight to Dubbo and the wonderful Western Plains zoo.

We visited the historic Dubbo gaol first, as we were told there were 'characters in costume' on the weekend. Ben really enjoyed the characters at Sovereign Hill, so we made a point of going on the weekend. Sadly there were only two staff on that day, so they weren't able to run the character plays.  We did get a costumed tour guide who was quite entertaining.

The zoo was the real highlight of our visit to Dubbo (and the Rose Garden Thai restaurant near our caravan park, which we always enjoy :-) ).  We spent two days exploring the zoo and managed to fit in all the keeper talks, which are always very interesting. We all loved the baby elephant, and I was very taken with the wild dogs.

I think the galapagos tortoises were our highlight, with the remarkably tiny 3 year old and 6 year old babies, and slow, huge adults with their amazing finch-response.