Exploring

After we left Chooky’s on Sunday we headed towards some uncharted territory for us.  We like to find some new roads when we go travelling and we excelled ourselves this time.

Firstly, we followed some rather minor dirt roads, then going around the north of the Warrumbungles to the town of Baradine.

This is a place we’ve been “gunna” visit for ages, but it just hasn’t happened….till now. Chooky recommended we have lunch at “Freckles”.  Mick and I just hoped it would be open on a Sunday. We were pleasantly surprised by Baradine.  It has a nice little main street with as small supermarket, chemist, rural supply shop, post office, takeaway and “Freckles”, which wasn’t just open, but was full.

We had a lovely hamburger and then had a poke around the vintage wares they had for sale.

The town hall was rather imposing.

After lunch we visited the Pilliga Forest Discovery Centre, which was really interesting, but forgot to take a photo.

We’ve driven through the Pilliga Forest from Coonabarabran to Narrabri on many occasions, but have never visited Pilliga, so that was our next destination.  The road started out tar, then changed to good gravel and finally rather soft, sandy gravel.

There were small settlements along the way, which would have been for railway sidings in years past.

Pilliga is rather small, with a pub, cafe, Police Station, Rural Transaction Centre and not a lot more.

No, there is a newer cafe than this one.

We had been told there are bore baths there but we hadn’t expected such a huge number of campers at the site.  This is only about half of them.

We continued on our merry way through Wee Waa, seeing lots of cotton crops along the way and finally arriving in Narrabri for the night.  We hadn’t booked any accommodation, as our travel plans are usually rather fluid, to say the least.  We were lucky to get one of the last rooms in town, as there was a vintage car rally, a bowls tournament and a historic train visiting.

We were told the RSL Club did a good meal and the setting was a little different.  It sure was……the restaurant, “The Outback Shack”, was decked out with lots of old bits and bobs, had a rain storm each half hour and a mural of an old street.  All really well done.  And the food was good too.

We timed it well, as just as we were about to leave, 70 train buffs arrived to fill up this section.

A great way to finish off an enjoyable day.