Day 13 Tuesday 8/6/21 Narrabri to Casino, 7-20 overcast

It’s a blessing to have a warm night but today is another ‘goodbye day’ as VeeWee and Nic head north to Boomi and the Qld border. We’ll be heading east to the coast. Goodbye days are always sad, but we’ll meet up again somewhere on the way back down.

The Mt Kaputa crossing is stunning with threatening clouds building in the distance. There are a lot of dry creek crossings, we wouldn’t want to be coming through here in a few days time.

We stop for a coffee at Bingara but the only cafe, the iconic Peter’s Cafe has closed.

Inverell is busy and beautiful with solid attractive buildings. It’s a winding drive across to Glen Innes. It’s always cold here and today is no exception it’s 13 degrees and we grab a hot pie and coffee for a driving lunch.

We aim to push on as far as we can today, the further the better. From Glen Innes north up the New England Highway to Tenterfield it’s seemingly constant roadworks. We press on, east again on the Bruxner Highway, a stretch we’ve never done and don’t know what to expect. We now learn that it’s a steep and winding crawl through hills and hairpins and more roadworks there’s even a towering waterfall dropping down a far distant cliff as we cross this wild section of the Great Dividing Range.

Before we know it the temperature rises to 20 and the vegetation becomes lush and tropical. Mt Warning can be glimpsed to the north. Wearily we arrive at the Big 4 Casino Holiday Park close to 4:00pm. On VeeWee’s advice we take a hedged drive through site which is long enough for two vans and has both gravel and a nice stretch of lawn, real lawn, not grass. Gosh we’re getting flash and I’m seriously over picking up bits of grass of the van floor. The most important thing is that we’re in a high well drained site with warm weather.

As predicted the foul weather is on the way with snow forecast from Tasmania to S.E Qld. Thankfully, only one day’s rain is predicted for here and we don’t have to drive!

This park was built on an old airport by the CMCA (Caravan and Motorhome Club of Aust). There are retirement homes at the back, a wide grassy area for long term stays and long hedged drive through sites for short stays. In all there’s space for about 250 vans and tents in a pleasant garden setting.

Accom: 31.50

Towing Kms: 464kms (Phew that was a big one for us!)