Coonabarabran 11th February

Today is a filler. We are expected to visit friends in Dubbo tomorrow, Thursday, so after our Goondiwindi walk, coffee and breakfast we have a 10:30am start to head south to Coonabarabran via Moree and Narrabri. Really just an easy 3 hour drive.

Firstly, the rig! We drive a Toyota Landcruiser Sahara, very comfortable and capable. We tow a 21 foot (8 metre) caravan, a Lotus Freelander semi off-road, also very comfortable and capable to do the highways, roads and tracks that we wish to travel.

Just on 125klm down the Newell Highway from Goondiwindi lies the major NSW town of Moree. Its wide treelined streets, many feel like Boulevards, are bordered by early 1900’s homes on reasonable sized blocks. The town was settled around a significant water source of the Mehi River and the creeks and semi-lakes formed here. In the early days the township was bustling with horse drawn carts and bullock teams, hence the wide roads. The main street of the old strip shopping area, Balo Street is dominated by large two storey buildings bearing grand names such as “Empire Building” and “Victoria Hotel harking back to our colonial heritage, and grand they are. Today this area is dominated by cafés, boutiques, beauty salons and real estate offices, a far cry from the general stores and rural supplies.

With our long rig we parked in a back street and walked through the town for a while. Here we also decided to have a coffee and toastie (toasted sandwich) in a trendy small café. This Toastie deserves an honourable mention as we both ordered a different selection of fillings and we both proclaimed that these were the best toasties ever, true!

 Alas the best toasties ever were soon devoured along with a very decent Piccolo coffee, time to continue south through Narrabri and on to Coonabarabran some 220klm south. The main roads and highways of Australia’s Outback are sealed, wide and often very straight. Traffic is minimal compared to the populated coastal routes making travel pretty quick and relaxing. Out here we set the cruise control on just under the 100kph, sit back and pilot our rig across the flat plains. Halfway on this journey lies Narrabri, another cotton and wheat centre, and one which we have visited on numerous trips, but not today!

We arrived in in Coonabarabran just after 4pm, booked into the first Caravan Park on the north side, spent 10 minutes putting up the awning, electricity as plumbing, then the heavens opened and I think as well as 4 massive lightning strikes nearby, we received about 60mm of rain in a half hour. Gotta love this country.