Day 110 Monday 28/9/20 Quirindi to Lake Burrendong, 19

It got down to about 8 degrees overnight. The gas hot water service coughed and gasped a few times. Woody changed the gas bottle over and it started like a charm. Legs, the horse wanders the paddock behind us hoping for another carrot.

We top up our water tanks in the park across the road then use the dump point at another park on the way out of town. After a wrong turn thanks to yours truly we take the Kamilaroi Highway then the Coonabarabran Road through fields of crops that stretch to the distant hills. The roadside weeds flower in a carpet of yellow, purple and white. We must be getting south now as the Murray pines have started to appear.

We stop for a break at Premer Lions RV Park to find that we’re now in dry pink hungry soil. Poor old El Prado is attacked by a nesting magpie and while he complains bitterly Elle feeds it. A few kilometres down the road and we turn south onto the Black Stump Way where we encounter road signs warning of “Road surface deformed for next 5kms”. Yep, deformed and ugly!

Standing outside the Coolah bakery we wonder whether we should call an early lunch when a woman from San Diego tells us that the pies are good. And Bingo! Just like that El Prado who chats to everyone gets her life story and we declare an early lunch. Filled with pie we meet another caravanning couple who’ve settled here in Coolah. We discuss towing mirrors, as you do and we ask the best way to Wellington. “What do you want to go there for?” They ask and we tell them that we’ve never been and off we go.

Like this morning there are grain crops to the horizon and flowering roadsides. The purple of Paterson’s Curse is I’m sad to say magnificent considering that this weed truly is a curse. We pass through Dunedoo (and yes we have been to Inaloo too). On the outskirts of Wellington we see a huge solar and wind farm under construction. The town is larger than we had expected and has some imposing buildings. The caravan park is on the river and we think we’ll need two nights to rest and explore. To our surprise there are no vacancies and not a bed in town they tell us. Why? Well there are 400 workers in town constructing the new power plant! Oh yeah, the one we saw on the way in. Elle does a quick ring around and secures two nights at Lake Burrendong about 20 minutes out of town and we’re thrilled as we’d expected that it being a lake would be booked out with holiday families. And it almost is.

The lake is vast and the caravan park which has recently come under the Reflections Parks banner is desperately in need of a cleanup. From what we can guess it has been a boat club with a lot of onsite vans and cabins but with the recent long drought the lake would probably have been dry.

Accom: $32.40

Travelling Kms: 315kms