the last leg to HOME

Our journey up the Newell Highway from West Wyalong takes us through Forbes, Parkes (home of The Dish), Dubbo (home of the Western Plains Zoo), Gilgandra, Coonabarabran, Narrabri, Moree (hot mineral baths) and on to Goondiwindi back in Queensland (home of Gunsynd).

Parkes Radio Telescope

We have seen emus a few times beside the road and vast areas of irrigated crops, grazing sheep and cattle, and vast expanses of nothing.  The weather has been quite warm and we even used the air conditioner a few times and the tan on the arms is deepening!!  We stayed one night in Moree where we were able to meet up with our eldest son who was travelling south and he had also stopped for the night.  That had to be the best hug in a long time, even though he climbed out of the pool to greet us!

flowering gums at Gilgandra

Leaving Moree we noticed that many of the creeks and even some paddocks looked to have plenty of water, albeit muddy, and then realised that this would have been the result of the heavy rains that came through that area back before Christmas.  There were potholes in the road and some areas where the edges were quite broken, all evidence of heavy rains.

monument to the Goondiwindi Grey

At Goondiwindi it was time to turn right and head towards Toowoomba and the final 100km to home.  The road is a little bumpy after Goondiwindi and Lawrie explains that it is always like that.  He had driven this road many times whilst he was still working and had thought he wouldn’t take his caravan this way, however, here we are driving through to Toowoomba and everything hangs together so all is good.  At least the road was bitumen, not like some of the other roads we had been on during this trip thinking of the Tanami Road through the Northern Territory.

water tank mural at Milmerran

We have enjoyed the last nearly 11 months and looking at our map book on our last night we are amazed to see how far that orange line I have been putting in the book every few days, has taken us.  There is no feeling of ‘we are approaching the end of our adventure’ but we both feel that we are instead just having a short break before heading off again.

I hope that those who have followed our travels have enjoyed our trip, and I do appreciate the feedback that I have received.

You are certainly invited to join us again (in the near future) as we again venture off with Destiny and Bruiser and most importantly, each other.

Total Mileage 32,896 kilometres – total days 323 with an average cost per day (fuel and accommodation) of $32.51....long live the caravan