Mick's Mystery Tour

Well, it's been a few days since we arrived home, so what have we been up to?

Firstly, Mick arranged to get the bike and trailer home. They should be leaving Rockhampton on Wednesday.  NRMA Premium Care is paying the transport costs.  They really have been wonderful.

I caught up on lots of washing - oh joy!

The yard has been given a good watering, as the weather is still desperately dry.  

Then, we packed our caravan and started to think about where we could go and what we could do with the remaining six weeks of our holidays.  Going back to work was an option, but we quickly dismissed that idea.

I cooked lots - a casserole, soup, chow ming, biscuits, a slice and an egg and bacon pie.  With the caravan we can take quite a bit of frozen food, so some quick, cheap, easy meals are ready to go and some yummy snacks are there for morning tea.  Not something I could do for our bike trip.

So, after getting our house minder organised again, we hopped in the ute this morning and headed west.

This trip is going to be very different from our last one.  This is going to be a holiday, as in sit somewhere for a few days and have a good look around, then maybe just sit and read or stitch or just be lazy.  It will be quite a change for us.  We don't really know where we will be going or how long we will stay away, but that's half the fun of it.

There was a big bank of dark clouds to the south, which only highlighted the dry paddocks.

Yesterday we heard on the radio that there were going to be markets at Molong today.  Bonus!  We didn't stumble on any markets on our last trip.

These ladies may have just sold us some yummy passionfruit butter for our toast.  

We were very good on the bike and didn't buy anything other than food and drink.  We may have bought some reading material and crystal glasses at the markets.  My excuse is that the glasses match our good ones and were a shape I regretted never originally buying 30 years ago.  These were still in their box and in perfect condition.  Score.  The books.....we are on holidays, you have to have something to read on holidays.  

We were captivated by the interesting clouds as we drove along, but were fortunate to be in the sunshine for quite a while.

Today was the day of "Spotto".

Firstly, the biggest big thing we had seen on the road so far was spottoed between Molong and Wellington.  Three pilot vehicles and a police car made us get right off the road.  Fair call, when you see this coming towards you.

We saw several emus.  This one decided to cross the road just in front of us.

There are camels at the caravan park we are in.  I'll have to try to get a photo tomorrow.

We stopped in Trangie for our picnic lunch at a nice park beside Goads Waterhole.

There were some magnificent trees beside the waterway.

Our destination for the day was Nyngan, in a caravan park right beside the Bogan River.  We had camped here in our tent once many years ago.

I'm not really sure about our neighbour.  I do hope those flimsy ropes keep him restrained.  We heard quite a commotion in the reedy area behind him just on dark, quite a lot of crashing through the undergrowth.  Then we spied the culprit........an echidna. Unfortunately, it was just a tad too dark to get a decent photo of it, so you'll just have to lake my word for it.

The view downstream.

The view upstream.  

There are a lot of cormerants (shags).  This one had just caught a fish and then lost it again.  On dusk we saw loads of fish jumping.  Unfortunately, no sunset photo as there was no sunset, just cloud.

There are plenty of fire buckets around the park so Mick got one set up beside our van.

What a great way to end the day, sitting in front of a little fire beside a river.

I think we may settle into holiday mode rather easily.