We left Lightning Ridge into an incredibly strong head wind coupled an incredibly rough road and so decided to spend a night or two at Coonamble. The town was inundated with greyhound dogs as a four day racing carnival was being held that weekend so we spent a day looking at the old buildings and the river while we waited for the wind to die down.
Dubbo was our choice for the long weekend to avoid the holiday traffic. We had previously visited most of Dubbo’s attractions so we spent a quiet weekend meeting some more fellow travellers and relaxing before moving on to Parkes for a night to visit friends.
Forbes was our last stop before “home area”, mainly to get some LED lights fitted to the van by a chap whose parents we met in Cairns and also because we had never really seen Forbes as we had always just passed through on our way to somewhere else.
We spent some time wandering the ‘higgledy-piggledy’ streets viewing and photographing the lovely old buildings which date from the mid 1800’s to the Art Deco period of the 1920-30’s.
Ben Hall, the bushranger, is well remembered in Forbes with an interpretive room at the local Information Centre in the old railway station, a statue outside and his grave in the local cemetery. Kate Kelly, Ned’s sister, is also buried in the Forbes cemetery.
A trip to Ootha and Condobolin was highlighted with a stop at Burrawang West Station to view the “Utes in the Paddock”. Twenty old Holden utes have been painted in Aussie themes by various artists and community groups and displayed in a paddock.
Forbes also has a large privately owned car museum with a variety of cars from all periods of time as well as motorbikes and several novelty vehicles. This was particularly interesting to the men who spent hours wandering around discussing the details of the vehicles with the owner.
From Forbes we went to catch up with the family members at Temora, for a week, Griffith, another week, Ladysmith, another week before returning to Temora ready for the harvest period.
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