Day 14 Monday 22/5/2023 Mullaley to Gunnedah, 4 – 20 warm & sunny

It wasn’t as cold last night and there was no traffic noise. We wake to a glorious morning.

We take the Oxley Highway east to Gunnedah and don’t have to search to find our destination as it’s the Kennel Club RV Park, adjoining the Showgrounds. It’s a small but well-cared-for park with caretakers on site. We quickly get a load of washing on the go and have lunch in the sun.

On the banks of the Namoi River on the Liverpool Plains Gunnedah is not far from the country music capital of Tamworth. Gunnedah Shire has a population of roughly 13,000. Coal was discovered here in 1877 which explains the very long coal trains rumbling past our park. Gunnedah is home to model Miranda Kerr and the grazing properties of the Mackellar family. This is the land that inspired Dorothea Mackellar to write the beloved poem My Country in 1904 and a painted silo nearby (by Heesco) celebrates her with the 2nd verse of the poem*.

The heart of town is only 700 metres from our park, and after shopping Mrs. Have a Chat and I visit ANZAC Park where there is a statue of Dorothea Mackellar on her horse. Further up the hill is a water tank that houses a museum and is also painted with a mural. This one honours those who fought in Vietnam and in particular, local hero Peter Capp. Among the memorials, there’s one to a local nurse who died from Spanish Flu while nursing at Sydney’s Quarantine Station.

We have happy hour in the sun while VeeWee executes some more puppy training on Buddy. Little Nic the poodle watches on with a look of disdain. We ring Liz and although she hasn’t left yet, she is sleeping on the new motor home. She’s still sorting out TV and CB issues.

Dinner is air fryer chicken with corn risotto cups cooked in the pie maker.

I nod off to the rumble of coal trains, mooing cows, and My Country on repeat in my head. Woody has his hearing aids out.

*Legend has it that Dorothea was irritated by Australians who longed for England. It is while staying in England and homesick for Australia that she wrote the poem. The verses of which still inspire us today.

My Country by Dorothea Mackellar

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Accom: $25.00

Towing Kms: 37kms (another exhausting drive)