Week 2: Glen Innes NSW - Eumungerie NSW

January 25, 2023

Week 2: Glen Innes NSW - Eumungerie NSW

Stats Overview

Km's Travelled: 1214

Km's Hiked: 26

No. of Camps: 5

The Adventures

This week we well and truly made up for our slow start, packing in as much as we could into it. We started off in Glen Innes and spent some time at the Australian Standing Stones site which is the national monument to Celtic people, past and present. It was pretty cool to check it out and definitely makes us want to see the real Stonehenge that it was inspired by. They did have an Excalibur sword there as well, however, neither Will nor myself were worthy to hold it - no matter how hard we tried! We also visited the cave that the bushranger Thunderbolt used to use as a hideout. Apparently he chose a good spot because we walked straight past it when we were trying to find it!

From Glen Innes we headed south towards Tamworth and discovered we had made it in time to see the Country Music Festival. That discovery was made even better when we were able to secure tickets to see Kasey Chambers in concert! She put on a fantastic concert and even brought Troy Cassar-Daley out on stage to join her. However, the sweetest moment was when she brought her kids out and had them perform with her as well. We had a great day exploring the town, getting a photo with the Golden Guitar and checking out the wax and guitar museums.

After Tamworth we decided to head east and made our way towards the town of Gloucester. It was the most beautiful drive through the mountains with some awe-inspiring views for us to enjoy. This however, quickly came to an end when we reached the final descent. What we didn't realise is that we would have to take our car and caravan down a gradient of 12% with lots of tight bends. We ended up having to put the BT down into first gear to try and help slow us down as all the signs kept saying "hot breaks fail". The engine roar was so loud we honestly started to worry that the car was going to blow! The only stopping bay halfway down the range was already taken by another car and caravan. Fortunately we made it to the bottom with no harm done, except to our frayed nerves! We used Gloucester as a base to check out the beautiful Barrington Tops National Park. We enjoyed a beautiful hike which took us through lots of different biomes and the drive up the range (minus the van) was breath-taking! We had lots of creek crossings and countryside to enjoy.

We then decided to head towards the coast and went to the town of Forster. Upon arrival there we were greeted by a pod of dolphins as we stood on the edge of the breakwater. It was so special to be able to watch them and we even got to see a few little babies! The dolphins must be a regular occurrence there as we saw them twice on our stay. We actually camped outside of town in Booti Booti National Park which was right near the beach. While the weather was unfortunately pretty average, we got to enjoy a hike and cool off with a couple of swims at the beaches the walk took us along. To finish our stay in Forster we had the best fish n chips! Apparently it is well known that the fish n chips around here are good because a pelican flew over and tried to get some of our scraps. They are terrifying birds when they come up close to you and start snapping their bill! Needless to say, we finished our meal pretty quickly! We enjoyed the coast so much we decided to head south and have a day trip to Newcastle. It was so pretty along the water there, and we enjoyed the views at the Memorial Walk before we got to cool of in the Merewether Ocean Baths, which are apparently the largest ocean baths in the southern hemisphere - fun fact!

We have now made our way back out west and are currently out in the small town of Eumungerie, which we are going to use as a base to explore Dubbo and the surrounds for the next few days. It looks like we will be set for a scorching few days, so we may be missing the miserable, rainy weather of the past week very soon!

Kodak Moments