Parkes to Forbes

     The 'Dish' had to be the highlight of our visit to Parkes. After its fame during the moon landing, it is still very much in use, communicating with most recent space missions such as the Voyager.
     John enjoyed seeing the house he lived in in 1978, and his old (now obsolete) bank.

                                                              White cedar tree
Pippy ate some poisonous berries which were all over the ground on our caravan site. We had an interesting trip to the local vet where he was given medication (in his eye, believe it or not) to make him vomit. After that we spent plenty of time clearing our site of the berries. They were constantly falling from a beautiful and gloriously perfumed white cedar tree.

Next port of call was Forbes, this is the view from our free campsite on the river bank. Forbes is a very pleasant country town, and the site of the shooting of the bush ranger Ben Hall  in 1865.

We visited his shooting site, out in the middle of a paddock of cows, and were greeted with this sign. Someone's found a good opportunity for target practice here and has put more holes through his stomach!

Next was a day trip to Cowra to visit the site of the old WW2 POW camp, where there was a mass breakout of over 700 Japanese prisoners in 1945. This is a replica of the guard tower from which soldiers fired machine guns and over 200 were killed. Three Aussie guards were also killed.

Cowra also boasts an amazing war, rail and car museum. Overlooking the cobwebs here and there, I've never seen anything like it except in Sydney, a real surprise for a country town! Here John is in front of an early tractor.

Heading further west, now in the geographical centre of NSW, not far from Ootha, we found 'Utes in the paddock'. Various artists have painted about 20 holden utes!