Geelong to Millmerran - 9th to 11th January

Hi to all our readers, we hope you all had a wonderful festive season and we wish you all a happy, healthy and fruitful 2010. Jude and I had a fantastic 3 and a bit weeks in Geelong. We had a very busy time visiting family and friends.


We hauled the Avan out of Aaron's back yard and began our journey north at 9:45 am on Saturday the 9th. Thanks Aaron for having our van in your back yard and our car in your front yard. It will take a few weeks for your lawns to recover, especially following the hot weather you are now experiencing.


We took advantage of the Motorway Route, not one intersection or traffic light between Geelong and Albury. We turned off the Hume Motorway onto the Olympic Highway north of Albury and headed towards Wagga Wagga. We eventually pulled into the RA at Henty to stay the night. It was 40+ deg when we pulled up at 4:30 pm and was still 40+ at 7 pm and we shared all this with nasty little bush flies and bitey ants.

The Henty Man Rest Area seems quite restful in the photo but it is 40+ deg and strong winds buffeting the offside of the van.

While we sat beside the Avan and sipped lots of cool water we had this vista and the passing B-doubles to look at.

This is the reason behind the name of the Rest Area.

The story of The Henty Man.

After a salad dinner we skyped with Justin in Mt Isa, had a refreshing shower and managed a great nights sleep. Remarkably, it was a quite cool 18 deg in the morning. We made an early start travelling through the towns of Wagga Wagga, Junee, Cootamundra (the birth town of Donald Bradman), Young, Cowra, Canowindra, Cudal, Molong, Wellington, Gulgong (the birth town of Henry Lawson) and finally stopping at Birriwa, in the Recreation Reserve RA. The temperature was in the high 30's and up to 40 deg during the day so we elected to keep driving with the aircon until the temperature began to drop, pulling into Birriwa at about 6 pm. Shorthly after we had set up camp we were experiencing a summer storm with the 'works', wind, rain, lightning, thunder and the temperature rapidly dropped to 24 deg. There are no photos of the RA here at Birriwa, it is not that memorable, with un-mown grass 60 cm high but it did have clean toilets of the pit variety. I had planned to make a blog entry here but unfortunately there is no Next G connection. 


We weren't so sprightly the next morning, Noel couldn't wake up! We eventually rolled out of Birriwa after 8 am. Today we travelled through the towns of Coolah, Tambar Springs, Mullaley, Gunnedah, Carroll Gap, Manilla, Barraba, Bingara, Warialda, North Star and on to Goondiwindi. We have to thank Roger and Belinda for the trip notes for this route. It is a very interesting and scenic drive on mostly good roads, with enough larger towns to get reasonably priced fuel. We have taken note of several interesting towns that we will return to for a lengthy stop over in the future. Leaving Goondiwindi we headed towards Millmerran and planned to stay over at Wyaga RA, unfortunately previous travellers have left this RA in a disgusting state with rubbish strewn all over the place even though there is a large dumpy bin in place. We were also put off by ants nests, patches of Prickly Pear and the dust raised by incoming B-doubles. We then travelled the further 74 km to Millmerran and booked into The Village Caravan Park, complete with lush green grass, clean amenities and our neighbours are from Golden Shores in Hervey Bay.


A special message to our readers in Hervey Bay. Judy and Noel will be back in Hervey Bay on Wednesday 13th January. We are booked into the Australiana Caravan Park, you are welcome to call in for a coffee.