Day 24 Thursday 1/6/2023 Narrabri to Gravesend, sunny 7 – 22

It’s a warm morning, though I’m sure the locals think it’s cold and wintry. We’re heading north on the Newell Highway once more. The road is patchy and there are roadworks. Cotton fields are in abundance. Meanwhile Woody is deciding whether licorice is better than jelly dinosaurs as his 10:00am treat.

There is flat country to the western horizon, a few mesas in the east. Why does driving north always feel like we’re going uphill and vice versa even when the road is flat?

Prickly pears start appearing, which tells us that we are nearing Moree and the border country. As we stretch our legs at a roadside rest area a chook dashes out of the scrub. There’s not a house in sight.

Moree is a produce hub and as we near the town we see sorghum, many silos, and hundreds of yellow-wrapped cotton bales, the plastic sparkling in the sun.

We bypass the centre of town picking up the Gwydir Highway, which always reminds me of the poem, There’s a spider on the Gwydir…

This is a section of road that we haven’t travelled and the scenery is interesting. There are orchards of young trees and enormous trees watered by the Gwydir River. We later learn that the orchard belongs to the largest pecan producer in the Southern Hemisphere and those young trees are a new planting of 70,000.

Gravesend is best described as a hamlet with a population of 360. We park outside the Gravesend Hotel, which is known as the ‘Gravo Pub’ with the motto of “You walk in, we’ll carry you out”. I run in and ask the publican if we can stay, and he directs us to the backyard and to park anywhere. The backyard is mown but there is an interesting array of junk around the fence line including an old Jaguar. You never know what kind of view you’ll get in this caper, but this one is rather rustic.

With little setup to do when we’re free camping (turn on the gas and start the fridge) we relax. Checking the backyard pub toilets, I notice something under the rim and assume that it’s one of those disinfectant thingies. Except, after I flush 3 small green fingers appear. A glance in the mirror and I realise that I didn’t even comb my hair this morning! Who got a bigger fright, me or the frog! After remedying that situation, I take the camera and have a look around town. Woody comes back from buying bread and tells me that the woman in ‘The Shop’ saw me taking photos and would like to see some of my sketches. We walk back and the owner, Kate, asks if I could draw her shop. We have coffee and cake out on her deck, marvelling that it’s warm even in the shade here. Kate tells us of how they were farmers out west of Moree before moving into town, then buying this old bank building. During Covid, her carpenter husband renovated the building and they’ve been open for 6 months.

At 5:00pm we sneak in the back door of the pub and through the pool room which has a coffin suspended over the pool table. The bar is cosy with an open fire blazing and walls adorned with the mouths of dead fish. Apparently, the fishing is good on the Gwydir. The amiable publican sets a fire in the dining room and we toddle in, past large bags of ‘working dog’ food and fishing trophies. There must be a lot of kelpies and blue heelers around here, because Kate at The Shop had a pile of working dog food too.

The dining room is warm and homely even though we are the only occupants sitting at a very long dining table. We buy tickets in the cricket club meat raffle while we wait for dinner to be cooked. A cat sits at the glass back door and the publican tells us that one cat is theirs, another who has a black patch on his top lip, adopted them and is called Adolph Hitler. A third cat, grey with unusually short legs was just hanging around. When they asked a neighbour if it was hers, she replied with “Oh, that’s Jimmy Short Legs”.

The crumbed lamb cutlets are large and juicy and arrive with chips and mash and vegetables. VeeWee battles through a huge T Bone. Basking in the warmth of the fire and of course the red wine we chat with the owner /chef who has also spotted me photographing the town and she gives us Gravesend calendars. Crikey, you can’t get away with anything in this town. Did we win the meat tray? No, but the evening is a winner, so too is The Gravo.

Accom: Free (Toilet only)

Towing Kms: 151kms

Clump Road, Mt Jerrybang Road, Slaughterhouse Creek and the township of Pallamallawa.

Footnote: We were sad to learn that our cheery Publican, Jeremy passed away a week later.