Warialda to Dubbo

As you know I (Ray) don't write long blogs but I thought I might write an introduction to Sally's epistle to set the scene.

People ask "What do you do tracking from town to town"  so I thought I should include two pictures that sum it all up.

Sally in another Craft Shop - we haven't missed one yet

Sally drinking coffee (with me) on the street in Dubbo- there is at least one good coffee shop in every town.

The rest is necessary because there have been a number of issues.  However all is now well and we look forward to trying out Dubbo as a home for a week.  So over to Sally for the real blog.

So, Sally here.

We left Warialda after a great night with cousins Nancy and John, who caught us out eating pies for lunch in Warialda the day before - they had come into town to shop, and we had stopped for lunch on the way.  Nowhere to hide in Warialda - it's basically one short street!

It was a very pleasant drive from Warialda along the 95 to Bingara, where we stopped yet again for coffee in the refurbished Roxy Theatre building, which was built around 1936 by 3 Greek entrepreneurs, operated as a theatre until the 1950s and then fell into disuse for 40 years.  The theatre has since been rebuilt for use again as a theatre and conference centre - very fancy for a small town!  The 95 joined the Newell Highway at Narrabri where we stayed a night at the Big Sky Caravan Park, spending most of our time (sorry, Ray's time) on fixing and fitting new tyre valve extenders on the inner back tyres.  Hopefully we won't have the problem of air leakage with these new, solid, valves.  I can't imagine that there can be TOO many more obstacles to our forward progress; I have all my fingers crossed and toes as well when I can!

It was a very pleasant drive along the Newell Highway, which is an excellent road these days, to Dubbo via Coonabarabran and Gilgandra (the Coo-ee town).  During World War 1, the first recruitment march began in Gilgandra.  This was known as the Cooee March, after the "cooee" calls at each town they passed, to attract recruits.  Twenty six men left Gilgandra on 10th October 1915; by the time they reached Sydney just over one month later on 12th November, the numbers had swelled to 263 recruits - the biggest recruitment drive of World War 1.

So here we are now in Dubbo, in the Poplar Caravan Park, just a short walk to the main street (really short - just across the road).  We're having a bit of R&R here, waiting for mail to catch up (thanks to the Favourite Daughter), enjoying the weak winter sun, planning a visit to the Western Plains Zoo to visit our favourites, the Siamangs, and anticipating the Farmer's Market on Saturday morning on the oval opposite the camp.