Robyn playing with her band at Leeton

We arrived home safely yesterday from Jugiong and now the four weeks away is already a memory, but a very nice one to be sure. I had tried to get this video up while we were enroute, but it wouldn't work so I had another go now and success. The clip is of Robyn and the band performing at Washington Furniture shop in the main street of Leeton Saturday a week ago. The properietor simply pushed display furniture aside to make room. They also provided complimentry morning tea. This will be the second last post for these holidays. Robyn wants to show you some of photos she took over the last week, so please check our blog out in a few days.

Hay to Leeton (Continued)

We enjoyed the Murrumbidgee River immensely and were always trying to get the perfect shot (which proved elusive!).

The best afternoons we had were when we got away by ourselves with the dogs and read our books for two or three  hours. Great relaxtion in such a beautiful setting.

Gorgeous river and gorgeous lady.

This is a good example of a tree that has long since lost it's main trunk and now had a mature secondary trunk replacing it.

I like these shots of Robyn.

We day tripped to Griffith from Leeton yesterday (about 55 kms). Nice town and had a good feel about it. Wide main street with well maintained lawn and mature trees down the centre. Main street was over two kilometres long. These flowers were growing in a roundabout.

Another view of half of the main street.

 The reason we are in Leeton this weekend is so that Robyn can participate in a gathering of NSW bands. Robyn is a member of the Wollongong Wind Band and here she  is giving a performance in the Washington Furniture Shop in the main street with her band combining with the Wollongong Brass Band.

Isn't she gorgeous? It is just turned 4 o'clock and Robyn has been away since three practicing for tonight's massed bands performance at the Roxy Threatre. I've had to pay good money to get a seat. Dang!

Hay to Leeton (about 160 kms)

Ahha. Back on power and so back to blogging. We stayed in Hay for a week and loved it there. Although town was about one kilometre away, from our campsite it seemed we were in the middle of the bush miles from anywhere. One night we drove 15 kms out of town to a sunset viewing area. The sign in this picture points to where it is. Standing there it seemed we were in the middle of a huge circle. Completely flat with no trees. Would have been better to have been there alone and absorbed the vastness of the landscape and the stillness around us.

On rare occasions the sunset would be spectacular, but you would have to be lucky. It would work best if  there were interesting cloud formations up the the horizon with just enough of a gap at the horizon for the sun to shine under the clouds. The lines are vapour trails which is not very natural.

Robyn silhouetted. I like this photo and should have worked harder on getting the best photo possible. More tomorrow......

Forbes to Hay via Condobolin and Lake Cargelligo

Pippy looks pretty zonked, doesn't he? He's laying on top of the cupboards and initially no dog was allowed to rest their bones there, but somehow Pippy prevailed. We are at Sandy Point Camping Reserve at Hay and there are about twenty other vans around us. Most move on the next day, but come late afternoon, a new batch shuffle in.

Saw this lost dog notice at the museum at Cowra and thought it was funny.

Didn't like the look of this fellow much. He was camped close to our site and we just moved to the other side of the reserve, well away from him.

Dogs are only happy when we are all together. Here they are keeping a close eye on Robyn at our Hay campsite.

Robyn is drinking fom a water fountain donated to the people of Hay by a turn of last century mayor.

Very nice walking tracks up and down the river fom our campsite. The trees are enormous and remind us of the trees we saw at Wilcannia. The orginal trunk has long gone (and nowhere to be seen!), and the secondary trunk growth is again huge.

This is the view we wake up to each morning. Town is not far away, but you would never know it. I better publish this before the battery goes flat. I have exhausted Robyn's computer battery to get this blog out, so our next update will be from Leeton when we will have power again. Tomorrow we are travelling 15 kms out of town to view a (hopefully) colurful sunset from a viewing platform with 360 degree views of a totally flat plain. I have read the Hay plain is the largest flat plain in the world.

PS The fellow in the third picture is a joke. I found him laying in the museum in Cowra.

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!

The start of our South East NSW holiday October 2012

Nicola and Dan's wedding on Saturday October 12 set our holiday start date and was a major family event. I love family weddings when you know at least half the wedding guests. They were extremely lucky to have such nice weather for their open air ceremony, especially when the weather was so foul the day before.

This is such a nice picture of Alison and Adam, I just had to show the world.

This is our son Marc with his dachshund, Max

This is my beloved wife Robyn with Pippy

Our Lake Lyell camp site at sunset. Lake Lyell is near Lithgow.

Robyn thinks people would not want to hear her practising the flute, but she would be wrong. She sounds great even practising. Nonetheless, she goes to a lot of trouble to go to where no can hear her and when at Lake Lyell, she found this out of the way pretty spot.

Robyn striking a relaxed pose on the banks of the Fish River at Flat Rock camp site in the Tarana Valley between Lithgow and Bathurst.

Another view of the Fish River. Beautiful, wilderness streams like this, gurgling and bubbling away, soothes my soul.

And yet another view.

Oops. Haven't worked out how to delete a picture. Hmmmm....

There is a lovely garden right in the middle of Bathurst. Here is Robyn behind a bed of poppys.

Coal to Newcastle

Coal train heading out of Muswellbrook and making its way around the northern side of Lake Liddell through the cutting. Clicking on the picture will enlarge it and properly show the length of the train. The end is not clearly visible and disappears slightly to the left of centre.