Your fee of $25 gets you power, water, showers and toilets with a dump point located several kilometres away. The sunsets here were just amazing...
Leaving Goondiwindi we soon passed through Boggibilla as we headed eastwood on the Bruxner Highway towards the small town of Texas.
This is an RV friendly town with a lovely free camp located several kilometres from town beside the Dumaresq River. A dump point and free showers are located in the main street. We have stayed here before but today it was a coffee stop at one of the local cafes.
For the next 76 km, the highway runs beside the QLD/NSW border as the highway twists and turns on its way to Mole Creek. This road is no different from many other country roads that have been damaged by the number of heavy B-doubles that constantly run back and forth each day.
Just 5 km north of Tenterfield we joined the New England Highway for the run into Wallangarra. The next two nights were spent camping in a large paddock several hundred metres behind the Jennings Pub.
The pub is listed in WikiCamps and Lyn who owns the pub cooks the most amazing meals and the beers are lovely and cold.
The Wallangarra Railway Station was opened in 1887 to link the different gauges used in NSW and QLD. The QLD narrow gauge used the western side of the station with NSW standard gauge trains using the eastern side. The opening of a standard gauge link through Kyogle in 1930 changed everything.
On our second day, we visited Girraween National Park and climbed the Pyramid and Granite Arch tracks.
After our walk and a quick shower, we travelled into Tenterfield for some sightseeing and for lunch. We have been here on three previous occasions to see the Saddlery shop in High Street, but our fourth visit was successful.
The building is still in its original condition from its 20-inch blue granite building stones through to its red cedar doors and windows. The ceilings are stained brown from the rising tobacco smoke over the years.
There have been many saddlers over the years but George Woolnough was the most famous of these being Peter Allen's grandfather. He was the saddler from 1908 through to his retirement in 1960.
Many people including A. B. "Banjo" Paterson were regular visitors.
George Woolnough's grandson Peter Allen has kept alive the memory of his grandfather with one of his best-known songs "The Tenterfield Saddler".
And these size 13 shoes he wore on the video of "I go to Rio"
From Wallangarra to our next campsite was a mere 57 km. I had read about camping at the Aloomba Lavender Farm just northeast of Stanthorpe from another Bushtracker owner and from entries on WikiCamps.
Unfortunately, the place did not live up to the reports that we had read but at $15 per night it was far better than staying in a caravan park. At least we had rather nice views of the surrounding countryside.
Our time spent here involved touring the Stanthorpe district sightseeing and visiting cheese factories, breweries, wineries and having lunches out. Some of the lovely cheeses, olives and dips purchased during our travels made for wonderful happy hours.
We left on our way to having brunch with Deb and Hank at Tenterfield before we headed our separate ways. They were off towards Alstonville before heading home the following day while our plan had been to camp on the Mann River for several days.
The temperature at 1 pm as we passed through Glen Innes was just 14 degrees and with the forecast of quite heavy rain over the coming week we decided to continue home.
Good read Thanks
ReplyDeleteJohn And Chris