Day 49 Friday 1/8/2025 Nambucca Heads to Uralla, 8 degrees at 4pm

We pack up steadily as it’s not a long drive up to Armidale. Woody is looking at his phone willing it to show smiley sunshine faces at Armidale. It looks like the Tableland will be getting the forecasted rain but there are no flood warnings. Staring at the blue (rain) lines on the graph he says “What does a white line mean? Oh, sh*t snow! We’re not staying there!”

And with that we revise our plans and aim for Uralla, they don’t have ‘white lines’ on their graph and the showgrounds are perfectly situated to handle a heavy downpour.

As per usual, the blokes around us all want to have a chat now that we’re leaving but we still manage to hit the road by 9:00. We pick up some more veggies at the fruit barn and sail up through Bellingen and the Waterfall Way.

On top of the Range it’s misty, we’re at 1300 metres. The trees are cloaked in moss and there are pretty high-country streams.

We reach Armidale at noon, find a long parking space and go in search of an ATM as the showgrounds only take cash. When the machine asks Woody to remove his card, he accidentally bumps it and guess what? Yep, the machine eats his card. We go inside the bank to be told that their policy is to destroy all cards from other banks, thanks for your help. Our mob are thankfully, on the next corner and within minutes they’ve put a block on the card and issued a new one which should arrive home about the same time as us.

We give up on finding lunch and continue on to Uralla, stopping at the old Trickett’s Store (which I’ve drawn in the past). It now houses a café with the unusual name of ‘An Alternative Root’. Whether they are referring to vegetables or highways (as the New England is) we aren’t game to ask, Woody buys a cap though. Hats and funny names aside this is a very nice café with a cozy vibe. We chomp our chicken, cheese and avo paninis and soak up the atmosphere.

The showgrounds are just around the corner. There’s a warning on the phone for flooding down in Bellingen. I guess we have made the right decision. We set up near a couple of horses, the sky is now an inky colour and it’s only 8 degrees. We’ll stay here tomorrow as the rain forecast is still ugly and there are warnings out to not drive.

We’re on power so dinner is eggs and potatoes, which taste better than they sound, cooked in the piemaker. Gosh that thing is versatile and easy.

The thing about caravanning is that you never know what each day will bring, and you can never say with certainty where you’ll spend the night. With the ‘hatches battened down’ we wait for the rain.

Accom: $30.00, Fuel: $75.01