I set off reluctantly for Queensland this morning. The weather was grey and I was sorry to be leaving Phil behind. The clouds looked ominous and it was chilly. Thirty minutes out of town the light came on showing my bike was overheated. It certainly was. The engine block was boiling and the coolant was steaming in the tank. Even more worrying there was a coolant leak somewhere and I had green gunk running down my leg again. Unable to call Phil I headed back to see him. He was at church so we stayed for a while then went back to his place where he spent another hour working on the bike. It is wonderful that he is so handy. He found a pinched hose and that seemed to fix the problem. After a short test ride I finally set off again ......... only five and a half hours late.

It was a nice ride once I put on my wet weather gear to cut out the cool wind and although I was already missing Phil, it was wonderful to be out on the road again.
Google Earth tells me it is over 11 hours from Mudgee in New South Wales to Redbank Plains in Queensland. That is why I do the trip over two days …and why I am doing a second trip along the same road. The alternative routes are over 12 hours.

This time there was a noticeable difference in the landscape. Most of the fields were still dry looking with sandy coloured grass but in amongst them there were some bright green patches where new shoots were growing up in the curved furrows of the newly ploughed fields. The bright almost lime green of these fields contrasted with the dry dusty brown of most of the scenery. The trees and bushes were every green in between, all set off by the bare earth along the roadside. It’s a orange, red dusty colour that would look quite at home on Mars.

My first stop was Gulgong. It is a small enough place but it has a very unusual heart. In the middle of town is a narrow street lined with two storey wooden buildings from an earlier time. They seem close enough to almost touch across from the balconies. Even the local big W looks like it is from the last century.

Coolah is the next town on my route. Its claim to fame is that it is the home of the black stump. Perhaps it was naïve of me to expect to be able to visit a black stump there but apparently there isn’t one and this is not the only town to lay claim to this title.

Cooonabarabran is my next stop. Last time I came though I visited the lovely crystal museum and shop. It has years of history including fossils and rocks of many kinds.
 


Coonabarbran is also home to an observatory and someone very creative has put planets along the highway so that they are roughly in the position they would be relative to the sun. It is an interesting idea and so far I have seen Pluto, Jupiter and two Saturns. I think that is because Saturn is easy to spot with the wide rings and most of the outer planets are just tiny specks on a large sign. I like things like this that set a town apart. Even the information centre has a dinosaur skeleton and fossils.

That last hour to Narrabri was tiring. I followed a large truck and kept my head down to save energy. I was mesmerised by a rope hanging off the back door of the truck that kept swinging around and cleaning a circle into the back door dust. It looked like it may have left a groove too. I was tired but happy. The setting sun over the flat grasslands was beautiful, In New Zealand I only ever saw the sun as it hit the tops of the mountains.