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After a few days around Dorrigo, we headed off to Armidale as it was the biggest town where we could buy a douvet! Then we retreaced our steps to our booked campsite in the Wollomombi Falls.
<Above> On the way (and it's called the Waterfall Way for a reason) we stopped off at the Ebor Falls. Note the bright blue sky...
<Above> Our very pleasant campsite at Wollomombi Falls.
<Below> Wollomombi Falls - All that was missing was water!
<Above> At the Warrumbungle Nat Pk. The camping area has been completely rebuilt since it was destroyed by a bush fire in 2013. We (OK, I) wanted to stop here as it's Australia's first Dark Sky Park and I wanted to get some nice Milky Way star shots. What I hadn't thought too much about was that this was the last weekend of the NSW school holidays, the park was full, and every camp had LED lights. Oh well, next time?
<Left> Proof that the Law of Gravity has not been repealed in this Nat Pk.
Also, the Breadknife rock formation in the background. No, we didn't climb it.
<Right> One of the observatories of the Siding Spring Observatory site.
It's here for a reason - see 'Dark Sky' reference above.
<Left> As we were going to drive right passed it, of course we had to call in to 'The Dish'. It's the the nickname (and the name of the film made around it) for the 64 m CSIRO Parkes Radio Telescope , built in 1959 and officially opened in Oct, 1961. If you watched Neil Armstrong step off onto the moon, this is what was getting the pictures from the Moon.
<Right> The original radio receiver cabin that used to sit inside the dish. It was removed in 1995.
Next overnight stop was Forbes, where we found a delightful caravan park alongside the Lachlan River.
The next stop (but not overnight) was the Japanese Garden and Cultural Centre at Cowra. It's a traditional Japanese garden that is home to Japanese PoWs who died in Australia during WWII. It is a lovely and peaceful place on the side of a hill.
<Above> Just a beautiful smooth bit of topiary in traditinal style
<Above> One of these things is not like the others.
<Left> The Autumn colours were just magnificent.
Tonight's stop was at a free (well, donation requested) site at Gundagai. Once again, we awoke at about 5am freezing cold (although we did have a douvet by this stage). The reason? Out of gas again. We had been running our gas heater pretty heavily as it was just about silent compared with the on/off cycles of the air con. It would seem that it used a bit more gas than we were expecting, and I was putting off refilling the gas bottle until we got to Corowa (next leg).
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