Australia from 1 to Z.

Lightning Ridge July 9, 2023 Easy run up from Armatree, through Coonamble to ‘The Ridge’. Road no worse can last time, maybe better in places, although there were plenty of “80 kph, Reduce Speed, Rough Surface” signs. Not that you could tell the difference. At one stage we amused ourselves by taking   snaps out the window of the mirage you always get here. Mirage, somewhere south of Walgett Lightning Ridge doesn’t seem to have changed any: favourite coffee shop has gone, another one has opened around the corner. My old house on the corner seems even closer to collapse, but apart from that, nothing much different. Been snapping this old house since 2011 We approached the Info place to see what was new around town to find that there was a new tour, a bit out of town, so we booked that, and the ‘old lady’ whose house we toured many years ago was back, and open for tours again, so that’s a starter as well. To finish off the day we cruised out the the Edge proper to watch the sunset.

Armatree NSW July 8, 2023 An early start today to do North Parkes Parkrun. A bit of a challenging track, but it wasn’t the hills that were the problem, it was the icy wind blasting straight at you. At least it was only half the time as when you turned around it was on your back and didn’t feel so bad. Funny thing though, as you would expect a few tourists among the 30 strong field, and only as I mad it back to the van that one of the couples was in the van next to us! Talk about small world. We left Parkes at a reasonable hour, skirted round road works and made it into Gillgandra at about 1232, two minutes late, I'm told. Actually we were to meet Kathryn, Ben and Andrew at the visitors’ centre and they had just pulled in from Narrabri on their way home. After a quick consultation we went up in to ‘Gill’ to the Royal Hotel and had lunch. Then out along the Castlereagh to the cemetery where, with no help from my brilliant memory, but a bit of interweb sleuthing by Kathryn,  we found

Parkes, NSW July 7 2023 Finally we were able to tear ourselves away from Canberra and home, heading north again, seeking some warmer weather. This time we were heading Parkes for our first night, a run of about 300km. We stooped at Boorowa for a break, but the cafe that we had ‘discovered’ a few years back on a BMW run, was unfriendly, cold and had nothing to eat that took our fancy. We wandered back up the road, stuck our heads into a cafe we didn’t recognise that only sold pizza, and ended up back at the bakery. We were only going to get a take-away coffee but succumbed, yet again, to the temptations of a rock-cake. A pleasant enough run up to Cowra, then left and right to continue following the Lachlan Way toward Forbes. We pulled up at Goolagong, a tiny town at the junction of the road that goes either to Forbes or Orange, and made ourselves a sandwich in the van. It did occur to us that it was now colder than Canberra and starting to rain. After lunch we pushed on to Forbes.

  1770 - Sitting on the crystal clear waters of Bustard Bay 1770 Good old Captain Cook (actually he was 'only' a Lieutenant at the time) thought this would be a good place to pull up for the night. Not much of a town, but a really nice place to chill out. Try the Pub, but order taxi home.