Mudgee to Armidale.
Unfortunately time to say goodbye to the Mudgee wine fields and head north further up into New South Wales head towards Armidale. A stop off at Gunnedah and Tamworth before we arrived mid afternoon. It is worth noting that Tamworth is the Country and Western capital of NSW if not Australia and there is a big festival that happens every year (luckily the weekend after we passed through). To mark this fact it has a giant golden guitar which is 7m high and well �.golden. See the photo page of (�Big� things), conveniently comes with attached gift shop with large amounts of tat, sorry I mean �souvenirs�, that are all things Country and Western orientated.
Armidale seems a very pleasant little town with one main high street with a number of old colonial style buildings. After setting up at the caravan park (once again opting for a caravan over tents) we wandered into town and dined in the local pub before staggering to Coles (supermarket) to buy some food. As it was late at night and we limited ourselves to buying �Only things that are on special� which mainly ended up being bread products. The day was well rounded off by playing Scrabble (which Darren predictably won) while stuffing ourselves with rolls and iced buns!! Dough!!
Tuesday 14th Jan
The Waterfall Way
Basing ourselves from Armidale we spent today visiting large parts of the Waterfall Way that as the name suggests is the highway that runs through a selection of national parks with waterfall scenery. This included Baker Creek Falls (no water but very pretty), Wollombi Falls and then Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. At New England National Park (1561m/5000ft) we decided it would be nice to do a bit of a bushwalk and managed to get ourselves onto a track that should have been a 20min round walk but instead just seemed to keep on going down further and further into the valley. After 30 minutes we turned around headed back where we had come from which was just as well as we found out that we had managed to get onto a track that was probably 2hrs round trip!! However it did mean that we got to see some of the fauna and flora including a fruit thing that looked like a gooseberry only with very long spikes coming out of it. We dared Finch to eat one but he wasn�t having any of it.
A quick stop at Ebor Falls (where we saw a grey kangaroo) before heading back for the comforts of the pool at the caravan park. Also took advantage of the ping-pong table to have a round robin contest in which Bassett defeated Finch by the narrowest of margins (a glorious British victory over the former convicts�..).
Wednesday 15th Jan
Armidale to Warwick
We left Armidale at a reasonable hour travelling up through Gyra, Glen Innes (nice town hall) and arrived around lunchtime in Tenterfield, which appeared to be a small town on the map, but turned out to be a one road town with a few residential streets tacked onto it for good measure. Having managed to drag me past the coach that was for sale down the high street (visions of �Summer Holiday� and Pricilla QotDessert� (only not in drag) for travelling around Oz), we had lunch in a �local� pub where they were serving chicken schnitzel, chips, and salad big enough to feed a family of six for a bargain $6.50 (about 2 quid). Over lunch is was decided, definitely, that we would NOT be climbing Bald Rock in the nearby national park as none of us had the appropriate footwear/didn�t feel like it/we didn�t have enough time.
Having reached the top of Bald Rock I have to say the view was magnificent and well worth the rather steep ascent to the top. Don�t ask me how it happened, Darren and Simon started to go up a little way to get a photo and before we knew it they were heading for the top like Linford Christie and Ben Johnson leaving Sarah and I trailing in their wake. Bald rock is in the middle of granite country north of Armidale in the north of NSW � it is xxx m high and is basically a huge granite rock that has been left as the rest of the ground has eroded away over time. The views from the top are spectacular and you must be able to see for at least a 100kms � there is also bizarrely a guest book at the top that you can sign to show you actually made it.
Tired but smugly successful we headed further north for Warwick to camp for the night. Now I don�t know what Warwick in the UK is like but I sincerely hope for their sake its nothing like the Warwick here � suffice to stay we ended up on campsite (where there were no other campers) with long term residents in caravans who looked like they were about to star in �Jason part XI � The Warwick Bloodbath� and town was dead � it wasn�t just quiet it was almost deserted!