It's so hot .....

16^th Jan.

We have been on the road for just over a week now and have covered over 1200kms, spent several hundred dollars on diesel, and seen so many ‘Big’ things already including a Golden Guitar, a Banana, a Chicken, a Soldier and a Rabbit Trap!  We left Grafton and headed to Dorrigo and Ebor, but it was so foggy we couldn’t see any of the falls or any of the stunning views that area is renowned for, but it was lovely to be cold and have long sleeves on for a change.

 From there we headed to Albert to see Kathy & Michael, it’s a little place not far from the geographical centre of NSW.  We checked out some silos, I got to ride with Michael in the tractor, but we missed them ‘crutching’ the sheep-gutted! (For all of you non-farmers out there, it’s where they shear them around their faces and bums!).

From Albert we headed to Parkes to see ‘The Dish’.  It is a 64m diameter parabolic dish used for radio astronomy.  Astronomers don’t look through the telescope, instead the smart people and lots of expensive equipment turn the radio waves collected by the dish into pictures of objects in space.  Most famously they were the prime receiving station for the Apollo 11 mission- as seen in the movie of the same name!

We then continued on to Forbes for the night and stayed at a lovely free camping spot next to the Lachlan river, a beautiful setting but soooo hot. 39C in the day and only dropping to 27C overnight!! From here we travelled to Cowra, famous for the ‘Cowra breakout’, which was the greatest mass escape of prisoners of war in modern military history.  In 1944 over 1000 Japanese prisoners unable to endure the disgrace of capture, rushed the guards and 378 escaped, but all were eventually recaptured. 

Then on to Boorowa to visit Maragaret & Blair (Kathy in Alberts parents).  It was absolutely boiling here too, so was nice to be in the air-conditioning for the night as opposed to the van!  Then it was all too hot so have come to the coast and are currently staying in Marouya heads where it is a staggering 10C less hot!!

We are loving life on the road and everyone has little tips on how to make free camping a bit more like home.  This post is quite short, but if I don’t tell you what we have been up to now I never will.  From here we are going to head down the east coast to Merimbula and then head inland to pick up the Murray river and then follow it all the way to South Australia (Adelaide).