and on to Victoria and South Australia

The next morning, we woke up and it was raining and freezing! We packed up our tents in record time and headed into Armidale, which I willremember as being the coldest I’ve been in Australia 4 C, apparently. Not good when you’re camping and have no warm clothes whatsoever! Weird to see people with red and streaming faces..brrr.

Anyway, we were up high so as we headed on down the hills it started warming up again. Seriously- camping in the cold is just not fun any more! We went through Tamworth, country music capital of Australia, Dubbo, where they seem to be having breakfast wars, then getting Coonabarabran for that night. Everywhere has some claim to fame in Oz- here it was the ‘Astronomy capital of Australia’! Actually we did go to a little observatory, which was brilliant. We saw the bands on Jupiter, its moons, clouds of clusters of stars, the craters on the moon, and lots more that I’ve forgotten. Really great, though…Freezing again but the town had a lovely old pub with a fire which was really cosy. A very nice stop off…

The nest day we drove through the Warrumbungles, full of spectacular rock formations and cliffs, emus and kangaroos! Will put a pic on in a day or 2

On we went, next stops Parkes and Forbes, where the first pictures were sent to the giant satellite dish from the moon landings in 1969. Impressive- there’s a film about it called ‘the Dish’, which we watched a couple of weeks ago

From there, we travelled on through more outback type country, into Victoria, briefly, then into South Australia. We stopped overnight in the Barossa Valley, then it was off to Adelaide. Its also a really nice city, and we spent a few days just wandering around enjoying it, and also doing some things to get my visa extended. Anyway…been talking far too long now, so I’ll go and continue next time xx