On the road...

I'm on the road. Living footloose and fancy free. Feeling adventurous and eager to discover new places.  For 6 weeks I'm travelling around parts of Australia I haven't seen before. After having travelled a substantial part of the world my partner Benny and I thought it was high time that we take a trip around our homeland. I'm so glad we did because I'm having a marvellous time. My love for this country, the landscape and sense of space, grows with each place we visit.

Due to floods we were forced to take the inland route south to Melbourne (where we are now). This turned out to be quite fortuitous as we have greatly enjoyed our trip through the country. I grew up in the bush and this journey has stirred up childhood memories, no doubt softened by the haze of time. I have a romantic notion of country living which I'm fairly sure is mostly fantasy, but there's no harm in dreaming right?

So far we've visited numerous country towns, seen beautiful sunsets from the roadside, taken in the country scenery, explored national parks, slept in historical pubs, and spotted koalas, rock wallabies, kangaroos and emus in the scenery.

The above three images are of Dangar's Gorge near Armidale in northern central NSW. It was beautiful after heavy rain and we were lucky enough to see a rock wallaby on our walk across the rapid-fuelled river. It was the middle of the day when we went walking and terribly hot. We got a little overzealous in our exploring and stayed in the harsh sun for far too long, both of us ending up with heat stroke at the end of the day...yuck. We found the little chapel below whilst winding through country roads on our way back to the highway. It was like a little bit of the English countryside stuck smack bang in the middle of rural Australia!

The two images below are of the guest accommodation at the Gunnedah Hotel. It was old, decrepit and cheap (bonus!) but I got the spooks and didn't sleep very well. I swear there was some kind of spectral energy wafting through the walls of the guest rooms. I know for sure that there was a cricket in my bed - I saw it when I pulled back the sheets and flicked its thick dark body away as quickly as I could with the back of my hand. I decided to interpret its presence in my bed as a good omen. There had to be one good omen amongst the cockroaches, stained carpet and ghosts, right? Aaahhh.... 

Anyway, Gunnedah is the self proclaimed 'Koala Capital of the World' which also makes it the Koala capital of the universe, right? We saw one fat lazy drop bear sitting up a tree chillin' in the breeze, so granted there are definitely koalas in Gunnedah. I took a photo but it just looks like a blob on a stick - not terribly interesting. On leaving Gunnedah we decided to visit the Warrumbungle National Park. Little did we know that 10 days previously 93% of the park had been burnt to a crisp by a massive bushfire. There have been large, destructive fires happening all over NSW and Victoria this summer, and this was one of many. The park was closed for safety reasons but we drove to the park's entrance so that we could see the aftermath of the fires with our own eyes. On the trip out there we saw homes and buildings that had been totally destroyed by the vicious flames. All that was left of them was a pile of warped corrugated iron and brick rubble. I can't imagine how truly horrific it must be to lose one's home in this way (or to flood for that matter!). It was quite sobering to see the destructive force of this powerful element.

Onto more frivolous things....walking in sun-drenched fields, checking out the Big Golden Guitar in Tamworth (country music capital of Australia) and visiting The Dish at Parkes. We came, we saw, we photographed it for evidence...

Then, after a few more hours driving we found ourselves on the banks of the great Murray River, the lifeblood of so much of this vast country. Something about the banks of the Murray feels so familiar to me.  The river banks on which we stood, under the boughs of red gums and other giant eucalypts, were  reminiscent of the quintessential Australia we see portrayed in so many books and films. 

We stayed in Echuca on the banks of the Campaspe and Murray Rivers. It's a sweet little tourist village full of historical sites that attest to the once essential role of the Murray as a trade route. It's also the site of one of my favourite mini series ever - 'All the River's Run'. I didn't know this until I got there so I was kind of a little bit stoked. We stayed here two nights as we loved the location of our accommodation right on the banks of the river. Cockatoos, galahs, correlllas and kookaburras inhabited the trees along the rivers edge, and a family of geese had residency of the riverbank outside our room. It was all very 'Australiana'.

We left Echuca yesterday morning, stopping off in Bendigo for a look-see on our way through to Melbourne. A lovely man at a cafe in Echuca recommended that we see the Sacred Heart Cathedral whilst in Bendigo and I'm so glad that he suggested it to us because it was just beautiful. There is nothing like the silence and stillness of an empty cathedral. The gothic architecture seemed a little strange in the dry country landscape, but that was part of its appeal. 

Bendigo is an old gold mining town and there are miles of tunnels underneath the surface of the city. We took a tour down a mine shaft in the Central Deborah Mine (a once working mine which is now a tourist attraction). It was quite the experience. You really wouldn't want to be claustrophobic! I didn't bring my camera with me but I kind of wish I had as it was such a surreal environment down those mine-shafts. I felt like I was one of those Tolkein dwarves in the deep dark caves of Moria. 

And now we're in Melbourne, about to get ready to go to the airport and catch a plane to Launceston. Looking forward to seeing Tassie again - it's one of my favourite places in the world. :)