Bingara - Lake Keepit - Mudgee - Hill End - Sofala - Canberra

We left home Thursday 28th for Tasmania with our route once again destined wherever possible to avoid the major highways and byways. On this trip we intend travelling to Tassie via Bingara, Hill End, Canberra, The Snowy Mountains, and eventually Melbourne where we catch the ferry over to Tasmania. From Tasmania we return to the mainland and travel down the South Australian coast to Kangaroo Island, then into Adelaide where we will hibernate during the Easter period as we have no desire to be on the roads during this period. Our return journey home from Adelaide is still very much “up in the air” as the major factor determining which route we will take will be governed by climatic conditions.

The first leg of our journey is to Bingara, a pretty little town located on the Gwydir River in Northern New South Wales where we plan to stay for several days before continuing our trek south. Travelling via Lismore, Casino, and then the Summerland Way towards Grafton we eventually turned off just prior to Grafton heading towards Copmanhurst and Jackadgery eventually joining the Gwydir Hwy at the Mann River. We have to say, this is the first time we have travelled the Summerland Way and it was an absolutely beautiful, and if anything the road was far superior to the Pacific Highway with the added bonus of there being no traffic. And as for the drive from Copmanhurst to Jackadgery, well while the drive through the state forest was beautiful it did get a little “exciting” a couple of times.

Rejoining the highway an Mann River we opted, much to our chagrin to stay overnight at a local Caravan Park as massive storm forecast were starting to materialize on the slopes of the nearby ranges and not wishing a repeat of last year when we encountered wild storms and hail in the same region, decided to play it safe.

Friday morning following the massive storms of the previous evening we departed for Bingara via Glen Innes and Inverell, eventually arriving early afternoon. After setting up camp on the banks of Gwydir River under the shade of some she-oaks, it was relax time. Unbeknownst to us, camped a mere hundred meters away was a fellow Bushtracker owner whom we later met.

Saturday morning we headed into town for a wander around, buy the Saturday papers, a few other essentials, plus visit the local fruitier who just happens to specialize in making without a doubt the best fruit yoghurt that you will ever taste. The rest of the day was spent reading, swimming in the river and later in the afternoon joining the other Bushtracker couple for “happy hour”.

Sunday saw the arrival of a third Bushtracker owner, this one owned by a Western Australian couple whom Leigh had been in communication with on various occasions exchanging maintenance notes and who had also provided Leigh with an immensely amount of assistance regarding website construction.

With a degree of reluctance we left Bingara AM hours Monday for our next destination, Matthews Reserve located on the western shoreline of Lake Keepit near Gunnedah and one hundred forty kilometres further south. Our only problem was locating the camping area as it isn’t marked on any map nor is it advertised. After arriving at Manilla we turned onto the Boggabri Road and armed with what little information we had, compliments of our Daughter and Son-In-Law went in search of Matthews Reserve.

Turning off the Boggabri Road onto Corella Road and dirt roads once again, we made several attempts to access the foreshore of the lake in the belief that we would “stumble” across our destination. It wasn’t until we turned onto Prairie Road where Corella Road ended that we eventually located Matthews Reserve and much to our surprise, there wasn’t another soul there albeit the area was large enough to accommodate fifty plus campsites without any fear of overcrowding. Picking ourselves a lovely site on a peninsula affording great views across the lake, we settled in for the next twenty four hours.

Unfortunately for us the weather over the next twenty four hours wasn’t as kind as we had hoped with the winds becoming almost gale force hence any thought of putting in the yabby traps and cooking the rewards on an open fire later in the evening dissipated rather rapidly.

Departing Lake Keepit Wednesday morning we followed Prairie Road until it joined up with Kelvin Road, that road taking us directly into Gunnedah, all in all a painless exercise. Parking the van in Gunnedah, it was time to restock on some essentials plus it was an opportunity for Leigh to return his hearing aids to the audiologist since one of them had become faulty.

So now I’m back to yelling at him…….nothings changed really.

We left Gunnedah a little after lunch and after travelling thirty four kilometres west along the Oxley Highway towards Coonabarabran turned south towards Mudgee, with our destination for the day the historic gold mining town of Hill End seventy kilometres further on.

Having only travelled some sixty kilometres since leaving Gunnedah we were starting to feel somewhat lethargic so decided on a small detour to check out the township of Premer that according to our camping guide had an excellent community camping ground, and we weren’t disappointed. The community itself probably only consists of fifty residences, one general store, a primary school, sporting ovals, an engineering works, plus the camping grounds complete with barbeques, amenities, power and water, and all for a donation.

Decision made. The only other decision to be made was what the “ole boy” was going to cook me for dinner.

Awakening on Thursday morning all fresh and invigorated, we set off for Hill End following a Streets Ice Cream delivery truck that was burning more oil and generating more smoke than the Kuwaiti oil fires of the 1990-91; we suspect he was heading for Coonabarabran but how far he got we have no idea but he obviously had a serious mechanical problem.

Approaching Mudgee and seeing all the vineyards, we just couldn’t resist the urge to sample the produce subsequently cancelling our plan for reaching Hill End that day instead booking into a van park after making the obligatory visit to the local tourist information office and gathering the necessary data on wineries and their locations. One thing we did notice on the tourism brochure about the wineries was that quite a few of the establishments now include a GPS reference – what a brilliant marketing idea in the era of satellite navigation systems. Armed with that information Leigh spent the evening loading into the GPS the relevant data points for those wineries we decided to visit.

Following morning armed with our GPS we set sail to see how much damage we could do to our credit card. All up we visited eight wineries plus a couple of speciality food outlets, the end result being some beautiful boutique wines, sauternes and after dinner wines, and yes we succeeded in inflicting some serious damage to the credit card. Overall we were quite surprised with the quality of wines in the Mudgee region but even more surprising was lack of corporate wineries, something that didn’t faze either of us. I think the wines we enjoyed most and subsequently brought the most off were from the Burnbrae Winery, while the most opulent of the premises that we visited were those of the Robert Oatleigh winery, who incidentally is also the owner of the Sydney to Hobart maxi yacht “Wild Oats”. Unfortunately there were several that we had earmarked to visit but were closed including the “Red Clay” winery however we were fortunate to sample that wine later in the evening while dining at a local eatery – it rated an 8 out of 10.

After a night of wild storms we headed off for the Hill End Historic Site not knowing what the road conditions would be like, something that was quite worrisome since there was a decidedly lack of information available regarding the road in general. As it transpired the approximately eighty kilometre road was pretty good albeit littered with a fair bit of debris from the previous evening’s storms, but the best part was that we only had to endure two sections of dirt road, each of about four kilometres with one section about to be sealed. The road from Mudgee was quite windy and in place very steep requiring us to engage 1st gear on quite a few occasions however that was more than compensated for by the outstanding scenery.
Eventually arriving at Hill End around 11.30am in rain we settled into the centrally located Village Camping Area. After getting established it was off for an exploratory walk through the village to view the historic areas, buildings and in general having “sticky beak” however our meanderings were cut short with the return of the rain.

Sunday arrived and while it wasn’t raining the weather was still quite threatening. Throwing our wet weather gear into the back of the car we set off to explore the region eventually returning some four hours later after visiting both the old European gold diggings and the Chinese diggings, several lookouts that provided panoramic views of the town and the surrounding valleys, historical sights, plus viewed a replica of the 630lb Beyers & Holtermann gold nugget unearthed in October 1872.

One interesting facets we did learn was that the Chinese miners preferred alluvial mining to seam mining, and that when Chinese miners did sink shafts they were always circular and not square/rectangle in shape, the reason for this was supposedly to prevent ghosts and evil spirits the opportunity to lurk in corners. If this is a universal belief or not for the Chinese I have no idea however I presume it was.

Awakening to another overcast day, we eventually departed Hill End around 10.30am for the village of Sofala, forty kilometres east and located on the Turon River. This time the road was mainly dirt, narrow, the decent was steep, and a great number of the corners were blind, all in all an interesting drive, eventually arriving at Sofala about one hour later.

Sofala is a quaint little village located on the banks of the river with a population of only about one hundred, a far cry from its heyday during the gold rush period in the 1850’s when it had twenty two thousand inhabitants,. After walking the main street, having coffee and cake in what was once the post office, we drove a short distance out of town setting up camp on the river bank and spending the remainder of the day reading and recovering from a hard days travel.

Tuesday morning we set off for Canberra to explore the sights, memorials, national libraries, galleries etc of the national capital travelling via Bathurst, Oberon, and Goulburn eventually arriving the following day after making an unscheduled overnight stop at Black Springs. The country side was quite scenic however transiting the Abercrombie National Park was interesting with the road dropping from 1300 metres (4200 feet) down to 450 metres (1500 feet) and then back up to 1300 metres in a matter of kilometres. Eventually arriving in Canberra early afternoon, we booking into the showgrounds near two other Bushtracker caravans; one couple we had met on two previous occasions.

The next four days were spent visiting various attractions including Cockington Green Gardens, a miniature English country village that has been recently expanded to include various icons from around the world,

the Australian War Memorial,

the National Gallery, the National Library, the National Film and Sound Archives, the National Museum, the National Archives to name but a few, and of course the various lookouts.

Unfortunately our stay in Canberra was spoilt to a degree with the arrival on Friday afternoon of a cold front accompanied by copious amounts of rain.

We depart Canberra Monday morning and start making our way to Melbourne via the Snowy Mountains where we board the vehicular ferry for Tasmania on Friday night.