Tom & Maggie on Tour: Saturday 22nd March

The Warrumbungle area is one of the prettiest and most popular for walking in Australia, if you believe all the blurb in the tourist information for this region. It certainly is much prettier than the area to the north of Warrumbungle Shire. It has rolling fields with bigger trees and greener grassland and even some livestock, and the road has bends! It was a lovely morning with blue skies when we set out (earlier than usual as this motel threw us out at 9.30am, not 10.00), and although there were quite a few clouds, the sun was shining.

It wasn’t long before we saw the first Driver Reviver sign so we pulled into Tooraweenha for a quick cuppa.

The ladies there were so chatty and one of them told a true story of an incident at Dubbo Zoo a couple of years ago. She was there with her family when a coach load of American tourists arrived, drowning all normal conversation with their loud “gee, ain’t it cute?” comments. One of the youngsters in the group ran at one of the kangaroos that roam loose within the zoo (or at least they did then), frightening it and it bounded straight over the fence into the tiger enclosure – whereupon the tigers set upon it and killed it. There was absolute panic with all the Americans crying and yelling all over the place and everyone there just shocked by the suddenness of it all. She said that although she was shaken by the incident, all she could think was “well, that’s one b****r less I’ll have to shoot for ruining my crops”!! That’s typical Aussie humour, we’re finding. While we’d stopped, I took advantage of the facilities, and used a “long drop dunny” for the first (and I hope, the last) time!

Several hours later, I can still smell it!!

After our refreshment, off we set towards Gilgandra. Blowing across the road were clumps of what looked like huge dandelion “fairies” but with less fluffy bits.

We have no idea what this is except that it is a kind of grass with tiny seeds at the end of the “spokes” (this is the best way I can describe it – see Tom’s photo).

When we reached the Gilgandra sign, it claimed it is the “Town of the Windmills and Home of the Coo-ees”. Well, that was sufficient reason for us to stop and find out what on earth the Coo-ees are or were – a football team, cheerleaders, or (and this is Tom’s suggestion – nothing to do with me) a bunch of sweet chaps calling “coo-ee” to passers by. I pooh-poohed this rather tasteless suggestion, but as we found out, it was closer to the truth than the first 2 choices. The Aborigines used “Coo-ee” to call to each other in the bush and it was adopted as a bushman’s call for help. The Coo-ees were a group of three men who walked from Gilgandra to Sydney in 1915, calling Coo-ee as they went through the towns. Their aim was to get men to enlist to fight in WWI. The original idea for recruitment was turned down as “too costly” by the authorities, so they set off by themselves to recruit one man per mile – 320 in all.

They succeeded, with 341 signing up and after medicals, 263 were deemed to be fit to fight. There was tremendous newspaper coverage as it really caught the peoples’ imagination. From then on they were known as “The Coo-ees” and the instigators have become local heroes. The Tourist Office in Gilgandra has a permanent exhibition to them – it’s very moving.

There is also an exhibition of one family’s history in photographs starting with very early sepia prints – interesting if you happen to know the family. The other display there that I did find interesting was a collection of Aboriginal art and artefacts plus rocks, shells and coral collected from all over Australia by one couple during the last 25 years. The shells alone were fantastic. There is free wireless internet coverage for the whole town, the only town in Australia (they claim) outside Sydney city centre which has this level of cover. Tom managed to log onto the wireless but couldn’t get any further. He thinks their server must have been down so he couldn’t download our blog then.

Once we got to Dubbo, we parked by the shopping centre and braved the Saturday crowds to find a coffee shop and supermarket as the supplies were running low. Tom also wanted some anti-itch cream for the bite he’d received last night and, as you do here, got into conversation with the assistant. As we were leaving, she asked “Does my voice sound funny to you?” “No” we replied. “Well, yours sounds funny to me!” Much laughter all round! Good customer relations?!

As we were leaving, I couldn’t help but notice that all the concrete supports for the bridge over the Macquarie River are painted with Aborigine patterns and none of them are defaced or grafitied in any way.

The next town en route was Parkes, where the Australia Telescope is situated. We didn’t stop as it was closed by the time we reached there, but hope to retrace our steps tomorrow for a brief visit. If any of you have seen the film The Dish, this is where it was filmed. If you haven’t, I won’t bother you with any details – it would take too long!! Parkes is quite large but it’s obviously quite a run down area. The big trucks are banned from certain areas at certain times so there were lots of them at the side of the road, with or without their cabs attached.

Question. What type of trailer is this? (Just to see if you've been paying attention.) It’s a very agricultural area so lots of tractor and farming equipment salesrooms and animal markets.

Forbes, just a few kilometres further on is smaller and the motel where we’re staying, the Ben Hall, is named after a famous, or should that be infamous? local personality
who was a bushranger in the early – mid 1800’s. He was always in trouble of one kind or another and was shot by the police in May 1865 after he was informed on as part of a gang who had been carrying out robberies in the area.

As we approached the motel, there was a police traffic check. We got a funny look, as we approached and then just before the check turned off the main road, avoiding the police. We were turning into the motel-Honest!! There is a huge purge on traffic offences over Easter, with more than 700 extra police on the roads in New South Wales. We also saw signs warning that any offences committed over the Easter period would automatically attract double fines, and double points. As an aside, the system here is the reverse of UK. Licences have 12 points if you've been a good guy, and you get demerit points for offences. Once you get down to nul points, you lose your licence.

We have free unlimited Internet access her so Tom’s been posting all the outstanding blogs and pics for you all to ooh and aah over! We’ve also spoken to Amy tonight so a successful evening all round. We hope you’ve all not become too bored by my ramblings. I’m sure you just miss out the bits you’re not interested in, but don’t forget, there’ll be a test when we come home to see if you’ve been paying attention.

I miss you all and thank you for all the comments and e-mails you’ve been sending us. If we don’t reply personally, please don’t be offended. And for those of you to whom we do reply – feel honoured – or else!!

Special interest. Having done the tour of the Skywatch Observatory last night, we found out that there is the world’s largest virtual solar system on all the major roads leading to Siding Springs Observatory, Coonabarabran (to be known as Coona from now on). They’re at 1/38,000,000 scale at the correct distance from the Observatory and each model is at that scale on its display panel. If you’re travelling at a speed of 100kph, you would be virtually travelling at 3 times the speed of light between the planets. Because we didn’t start out from Siding Springs, we sliced across the “solar system” and we missed Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars and Jupiter, picking up Saturn just to the south of Coona,