Kangaroos at Apsley Gorge campground
It was cold during the night. Just before midnight we awoke, put our socks on, and covered ourselves with our fleece jackets. It’s the first time that we’ve been that cold since we got here.
I awoke fairly early this morning and went out to take some pictures. I hoped to spot the rosellas we’d seen on the drive up yesterday, and I did find some, but didn’t get very good pictures. Parrots are hard to photograph. They seem very wary of humans, and the trees here are so high that they spend most of the time in the tops of the branches. I also wanted to see if I could find some more kangaroos, and did, but the best pictures I got were right in our campsite. Enid saw a mother with the joey sticking its head out of the pouch, but by the time she got her camera it had gone too far away to get a picture.
It was a great day when we left the campsite this morning. The sky was cloudless, and was like that for most of the day. The country is very beautiful, high rolling hills and green grassy fields. There were some cattle and sheep in the fields, though for the most part they looked very empty. Probably in normal years that aren’t as wet as this has been they have to move their cattle about to prevent overgrazing.
Fields along the Oxley Highway west of Apsley Gorge
The town of Tamworth hosts a huge rodeo, and there were big show barns along the highway. They also claim to be the country music capital of Australia. From there we drove south along highway 15, the New England Highway, which is a pretty good road, but much less busy than the Pacific Highway. All along the road we were travelling through good agricultural areas, and the views were impressive. In some ways it reminded me of the foothills west of Calgary, except that the trees are eucalyptus, not spruce. The town of Scone has many horse farms, and many, many wooden fences.
After lunch we drove on to Singleton. We missed the turn off onto highway 69. There was a sign, but it indicated towns to the east towards the ocean. We kept on straight ahead, but by the time we were a couple of kilometers out of town it was obvious that we were not heading in the right direction. I pulled off the road right behind a highway truck, and we asked one of the workmen where to go. He said that it was pretty dumb that the sign doesn’t also point out that the road goes in the other direction, but he also told us how to get back to the correct road, “the Putty Road”.
There are many very large open pit coal mines through the Singleton area, as well as at least two very large coal fired generating stations. Just after getting on to the Putty road we had to take a detour for highway work, and the detour went right beside one of the open pit mines. It was huge, as were the truck hauling the ore. It obviously is also upsetting to the people in this area, as there are many signs saying “Stop pit mining” and “We support underground mining.”
The Putty Road is very narrow and even more twisted than the road we were on yesterday. However there doesn’t seem to be a lot of traffic. We are camped tonight in a free site, “Boggy Swamp Creek”. The creek may be boggy, but the site itself is small and not bad. It’s right close to the road, but the traffic is light. There is no one else here, perhaps not surprisingly as there are also no washrooms. You’d have to be self-sufficient as we are. Most of the small camper vans we see would not want to stay here.