Sundowner Motor Inn Moree

Friday 24th July

Dubbo to Goondiwindi

Long drive today, left at 9.30am but did a little detour into Dubbo for a Gloria Jeans coffee. (Aaah that's better) so left at 10am really.

Picked up some cotton that was growing on the side of the road at Narrabri, kids thought it was funny that cotton balls grew on plants.

Side of the road in a truck stop for lunch, interesting ...

... that the next town would be our rest for the night. Moree. we checked into the Carapark which had 5 thermal spring pools for our use. after a quick swim in the 39 degree water we cooked up some tea, had a few bevvies and went to sleep.

Fact about Moree: The artesian springs pour out 13 million litres of hot water every day!

... it with seemingly endless horizons. The Kamilario (aboriginal) people were the first inhabitants of this region. We arrived at Gunnedah early afternoon which apparently is Koala Capital. We did end up seeing one wild koala in a tree. As we were walking around the town a local gentleman (Don)stopped and started talking to us about the history of Gunnedah. Before we knew what was happening Don insisted on giving us a very informative guided tour around the area in ...

... the school, and was shown where to set up. Usually, schools will put the presentation in a hall, or gym, or even the library. This one put it in the... take a guess... go on, think of the most stupid place to set up a bunch of expensive equipment and conduct teaching sessions... That's right, we were in the cafeteria!! Lots of access for students to break/ steal stuff (so my fun lunchtime job was to babysit the equipment) and lots of capacity for loud noises to interrupt the ...

... ever touches it, so there is absolutely no danger of a student getting shocked by it, even if it was faulty, which it wasn't...) even though no other school has ever noticed the lack of taggy or seemed to give a damn about it...


Next, the school was one of those private schools who insists on doing everything their own way. I gave instructions for there to be no chairs for students, as they spend most of their time wandering around the room and chairs get in the way. So they ...

... well and found out a little more about opal mining in general. Also had a swim in the Artesian Bore Baths on the outskirts of town. Nice and warm at 40 degrees C. Didn't stay in too long, but very nice.

... davids son) Kate and the new grandson William. On the way we dropped in to Robyns mum at Buderim and both Robyns sisters and families were there - an unexpected bonus. went out to tea with Chris and Kate after spending time with William. On the Monday we tavelled down to Brisbane to meet up with Felicity (Davids daughter ) and other grandson Noah who were arriving on the train from Townsville ...

... after the Melbourne cup (1st week in Nov). We did lots of clearing up around the site and I joined the boys doing the maintenance. However the only job I could really do was sweeping. I have never swept so much - there is a picture of a huge empty shed on the blog. Me and Tom spent 7 hours clearing all the dust out of it. It was a complete waste of time as there was welding and maintenance being done in the roof which caused mess on the floor so it ...

... to separate out the lambs. With the lambs in the pen next to the racks everybody got their station... Lamb catcher - picks lambs up and pins them in the rack. Ball's remover - Slit's the sack and bites the balls out - no joke. Tail clipping - um...clips the tail. Rear end shearing - er... Anti-septic sprayer - um... Of course the boys made sure the first thing Andrew and I had to do was remove some testicles. With our ...

10 days in Sydney dealing with PICK dealers and getting IBM to sign the distributil rights or PICK / OAv2. Took a side trip to the Blue Mountains - train ride was stellar. Stopped off the train on the way back to visit a small local pub. Back on ...