Tripping Over: Heading East- Melbourne to Moree

Very excited to be back on the road again, hopefully heading towards some warmth!

We headed out on the Hume hwy, and could have continued on the Newell hwy but decided to take the road less travelled, the Olympic hwy, our only aim was to head north!

Our first night away from Melbourne was spent at a rest area in Illabo, N.S.W, not much to the place except for a pub and a few farms but the rest stop had good facilities, which included a toilet (always a bonus!), it was a noisy spot though as it was just off the Highway.

It's about 480 kms from Melbourne, a pretty big first day but our aim was to get north as soon as possible and then work our way down the east coast.

Sunset over the pub in Illabo

We were up with the sun and continued along through a heap of small historic towns along the way, we even passed Henry Lawson's birthplace in Grenfell.

Our aim was to get to Dubbo but also call in at Parkes along the way to see 'the dish'.

We connected back onto the Newell in Forbes as it's probably the quickest way from here on in.

Old buildings left, right and centre.

Bogan gate sounded inviting but we continued on!

About 6 kms off the Newell hwy in Parkes we found what we were looking for, the radio telescope that was the basis for the australian movie 'The Dish'.

'The radio telescope at Parkes, New South Wales, Australia, was used by NASA throughout the Apollo program to receive signals in theSouthern Hemisphere, along with the NASA Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station near Canberra.'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dish

There is plenty to do and see here, and there is no charge to head into the information centre and find out more about 'the dish'.

Some of the prop's from the movie.

'The Dish'

Looks so heavy!

These small 'dishes' were a bit of fun, there were two facing each other about 80 metres away and you whisper into the centre and the person at the other dish can hear you, I couldn't even scream that far!

Brenton at one of the small 'dishes'.

After a bit of lunch at Parkes we continued on, we had a few drama's with our van on this particular day, well more like a comedy of errors.....

During one of our driving stints the caravan pop top had popped up, two idiot's closed it but forgot to lock it in!

We were not sure how long it was up for but thankfully it didn't do any major damage, then as we were driving away after fixing that problem we noticed the caravan door was wide open, lucky we had only driven a metre or so before noticing.... getting a little careless after all our time in Melbourne!

One more problem we had was when we were driving along the Newell and a massive truck went past and blew our towing mirror clean off, it was then smashed by the truck behind us never to be seen again, so not a great day on the road, definitely ready to pull over soon!

We were very happy to arrive in Dubbo safe and sound and with our caravan still attached!! We pulled into the Dubbo city caravan park , a bargain at only $25 a night for a powered site, the friendly receptionist also gave us a drive through site so we wouldn't even have to un-hitch, a nice feeling after driving 370 kilometres.

Nice shady park.

We were up early and went for a walk around the Macquarie river, another warm, sunny day!

There are so many pretty towns to see along the way, we would never get to Cape York if we stopped to stay at them all.

Some locals enjoying the ride.

At the rest stops along the way to Moree you can learn all about the planets, we didn't do a lot of learning but did do plenty of eating.

After driving 366kms we arrived in Moree, famous for the thermal pools, sounded good to us!!

We pulled into the Gwydir Carapark and thermal pools, $29 a night but they have 5 thermal pools to choose from.

The caravan sites are very squashy here but Brenton being the expert managed to squeeze us in, it was a very busy park.

'In late 1996 to early 1997 the owners of the park sunk a bore to a depth of 720 metres directly beneath the park to tap into the Great Artesian Basin and take advantage of the curative and soothing powers of the mineral rich water. '

Source : http://www.familyparks.com.au/CaravanParkDetails.asp?ident=gcarap

It didn't take us long to get settled and get swimming in the mineral rich waters!

The largest pool was the cold one, although it was not to cold for us to jump straight in.

One of the 5 thermal pools.

This was the warmest one at 39 degrees! Lovely at 7am!!

Trying our luck in the fountain of the youth,

Most of the time the pools were extremely busy but we managed to get in at 7am and avoid the crowds, the water and it's 'healing' powers does draw in the older crowds and we were the youngest people here by about 40 years, so if your up for a party probably not the place to come, it's all about relaxing here and us young nomads fit right in.