Update

Still home waiting on friends from America to arrive.

We will be on the road again in November to see Portland, part of the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians

This is the back yard showing the family room overlooking the dogs play area, with the outside loo in the background

Home for a while

The dogs at the Sheltie National were great. Kathy did not stop drooling all day, and was listed as Number One Suspect if a dog went missing. We had a realy good evening at the presentation dinner talking with the conformation judge and her family, and with the Agility judge.

On Monday there was a white flash going across the Hay Plain, it was us. We left at 8:am and were home at 11 pm, very tired but relieved to be home. Tom Tom the Navigator got a bit upset when we went over the old wooden bridge crossing the Murray at Toolybuc as it was not in the map. Kept telling us to turn around even when we were across the other side. Ah well, it just shows artificial intelligence is not as good as the real thing!

Next trip will be in November to the Vic western coast. Bye for now.

Sydney again

We stopped at Denman, a little town in the northern Hunter Valley. A good park with all ensuite sites, just some strange people that could not sleep as they were wandering round all night.
What could be more "bush" than a stockman rounding up cows on horseback? (the stockman is on the horse, not the cows). This photo was near a town that should have had a Country and Western festival in progress, but nobody was there.
The Holiday is over as we are back at the Dog Grounds in Sydney, surrounded by Shelties. Kathy is in her element waiting to see the dogs tomorrow. I will have to take some dogs because of the large entry, not sure what classes yet. Sunday will be Agility day and Monday will see us start back for home.

Tamworth

We made it to Tamworth, that's us by the Big Golden Guitar.

We had 2 days with Susan and John, including a BBQ at Johns place with Kathy's uncle John and Aunty Anne invited, making it a bit teary when we left.

The next stop was with Rocky, Melinda, Razhel and Louise at Jimboomba. I had not seen Rocky for over 20 years and had never met his wife and family before, so we had a great time getting to know each other. Another sad goodbye when we left.

We had to start heading south to be in Sydney for the Shelties, so the next stop was Tenterfield. Went in the Saddlers there. I did not realise that Peter Allen was talking about his grandfather when he wrote Tenterfield Saddler.

The drive to Tamworth was exciting, driving through bushfires at first then thunderstorms with lightning hitting the paddocks either side of us, near Duck Creek. There is also an Upper Duck Creek and a Lower Duck Creek but as they are all within a hundred yards and are not marked on a map, none of that will be of much use in locating the position.

There is a definite water shortage in this area, we went to Chaffey Dam and the water did not reach the bottom of the dam wall. Cattle were grazing on the bed of the lake.

Kathy is planning the next stop before we hit Sydney, trying to avoid going near Bathurst towing the van.

Palm Beach

We had a good few days at Arrawarrawarrawarrawarra (I dont know how to stop spelling it) with Lorikeets in the park being fed at 3:oo pm. Hundreds of birds - 4 people. Went to Carumbin Sanctuary, to see the bird feeding, hundreds of people - 4 birds.
Got the Xtrail washed at Dorigo by a youth group fund raising. The best entertainment in days was watching them washing cars and each other. One lad offered to move my car when it was finished, but as he had just laid 10m of rubber on the last car he moved, I declined the offer.
The pic shows the view from the top of the lookout above the Big Banana at Coffs Harbour. Lots of things to see and do, even got Seniors discount at the Clog Barn.
We moved on to Palm Beach in Qeensland and were in a caravan park next to the highway, to get any closer to the highway we would have been on the median strip, noisy traffic all night again. Met up with Kathy's sister Susan for dinner, and next day we moved into her back garden. Quiet, birds twittering, hopeful of a good sleep tonight.

Port Macquarie

We dried out at Lithgow, enjoyed the Jenolan Caves and with some regret at leaving the goats(the goats belonged to the park owners, but were expert at escaping, so we spent much of the time herding goats!) at the Lithgow caravan park, we moved on to Singleton, in the Hunter Valley. The overall impression we got was that the Hunter Valley was a beautiful place, but was full of people trying to remove as much money as possible from the tourists.
The Caravan park was on a junction of two main roads so all we heard all night was trucks slowing down and starting up again. We stayed 1 night.
Port Macquarie is a great place. The van park is quiet and a good site too.
We went on a sight seeing trip that covered 200 km including the Ellenborough Falls that drop about 400m straight down(see Pic).
We managed to get lost a couple of times, but we just told the Tom Tom GPS navigator where we wanted to go and it got us there. Not always by the most direct route, but we arrived.
Some really great photos, and some amazing views across the northern NSW coast and mountain ranges, with lots more to see and do. We will probably stay here a few days before moving on to Brisbane to visit the relations.

Lithgow

We are back at Lithgow after the wettest weekend possible. The dog trial was great, no UDX so I did Open while Kathy did UD, Novice and CCD. Some rain during the morning, followed by a downpour that left the ground flooded. Fortunately we had finished the trial apart from the Winner of Winners run off, which left Kathy out in the rain for ten minutes or so. The poor devils in the Agility Trial in the next paddock were running round ankle deep in water, but they kept going. We got back to the AVan to find it on a small island in the middle of the park. All of the others around us were under water. We were wet everywhere with water on the floor of the annex and our clothes sopping wet too.
Early Monday, like 7:30am we were packing up wet things and moving back to Lithgow so we could set up to dry out (and get a decent shower)

Now that the Golden trial is over we are tourists again. We had a tour of Lithgow and went on the Zig Zag railway which travels 7 kilometre to rise 750 metres up the mountain. Some spectacular views. The picture shows the thee viaducts for the track. The train goes over first viaduct on the left, round the side of the mountain then runs back over the other two viaducts.
All run by very enthusiastic volunteers that talk about trains forever.
Planning tomorrows touring tonight, probably the Jenolan Caves

The Blue Mountains

We got to Lithgow on Friday afternoon, rigged the AVan for an overnight stay and went sightseeing. Well we are tourists!.
The view from Echo Point over the Three Sisters is breathtaking, and it is only a couple of hundred metres from Katoomba's main street. I could not resist putting this picture in as it was just a magnificent sight. It is three pictures stiched together in Photshop.
On Saturday, we went to Erskine Park where the Dog Trial will be by following the directions from the Tom Tom navigator. It got us here OK even if it did take us the long way round. The weather is not good, frequent rain and a bit windy, with more of the same when we judge on Sunday.
We met Reg, an old friend from Canberra at the Agility trials on Saturday and had a good look at his Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever pup, 8 weeks old and the last of the litter. Very tempting but we wanted a female. We will be back in October for the Shelties and so will Reg. If that pup is still available????????

West Wyalong

We started out late on Wednesday, so whats new? We only got as far as Pinnaroo and booked into the caravan park. Very old, but clean. The notice on the mirror in the loo about not leaving anything outside the van and call the police if anything goes missing was a bit of a worry, but we had no problems.

Today took us across the Hay Plain, so called because there is nothing there but hay and it is very ordinary. Flat, treeless and carries on like a failed dog trialler! The picture shows what we were looking at for 100 km before Hay and 100 km after.

We arrived at West Wyalong about 5 pm after shifting the clock half an hour. Kathy has finally driven the XTrail, doing the 250 km from Hay to West Wyalong.

The weather forecast for tomorrow gave Katoomba as 7 degrees and reported the wettest day on reord for Sydney in September, so we have decided to stop at Lithgow tomorrow as it should be a bit warmer. The long term forcast is wet so it looks like we will need the big boots and waterproofs for the weekend.

Riverland

Back home after a good week in the Riverland.
The trial went well with a few good passes.


We got the Xtrail dirty at the Hattah-Kulkyne National Park after following some tracks to the river. The old Camry would never have got there, not enough ground clearance and some of the mud holes were deep.





The Overland Corner walk was made even better when Boots, the pub dog came with us. The only time we got lost was when we did not follow the dog. The local school has an ongoing project to mark the trail, but it needs some intuition, or a dog that knows the way, to find some of the paths.



Back to work, hard to take after such a pleasant week, but we can look forward to the next trip to NSW and QLD starting in September.

First Post

The Blog is set up and ready for the first trip, starting on Friday