Night Light

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DAY 79


It was a much cooler night, a huge difference from the warm winds the night before. In fact we actually found ourselves getting inside the sleeping bag in the wee hours of the morning to keep warm. We also slept better, but so well that we slept in until 8.00, but as it is Sunday and today we are in no rush as we decided to stay an extra day as we set up an am Skype session and also we wanted to stay around Forbes because we are basing today on our evening activity.

We managed to Skype our friends Gary and Karen as we had not seen/spoken to them properly for weeks. The Skype session was quite poor, we could not hear or see them, although that was not entirely a Skype problem, they think they have issues with their webcam and microphone so we had to resort to SkypeOut.

We are becoming adept at looking for the familiar Golden Arches and sitting suspiciously in car parks on the laptop chatting to people and blogging. Sorry MacDonalds but we cannot come in every day to eat a burger otherwise we will be the size of houses and won’t be fit enough to hike up some of these great mountain ranges, but we do drink your coffee (McCafe coffee is actually quite good).

The day was becoming very hot, even worse when you are sat in the truck with no air-conditioning on (not really economic to keep the truck running). We decided to drive round Forbes and take some pictures of the old/heritage buildings; we put most of these on the blog yesterday.

Forbes is a lovely traditional Australian town, some of the buildings are very old, well maybe 150/200 years old when they build something new it does contrast well with the old, they tend to keep some of the same building styles with the large open balconies.

Before heading back to camp, we stopped off to wash the truck, the last time that was washed was at Christmas in Port Stephens and if we are not careful it will look shabby. We are conscious that we need to keep it looking in good condition and not to mention mechanically sound. We will need to put it in for a service soon, but will have to plan for when we are in a major town with a Nissan dealer and plenty to do while the car is in the garage.

Today was going to be an easy day for us, we do need to rest sometimes! So we sat around reading, sat in the camp kitchen after lunch to do some laptop maintenance, back up all the photos and clear the hard drive down.

The camp kitchen is lovely, very clean and very well looked after, they have a fridge, microwave, kettle, toaster (we had toasted ham and cheese sandwiches for lunch) a fridge and plenty of seating. Oh did I forget to mention the huge hotplate/barbecue?

After such a hard afternoons work, the only place to go to then was the swimming pool! Oh what bliss. The water feels exceptionally cold, but that is only because we are so hot. This swimming pool is quite small, 4 people and it is full up, but I am not complaining as we got some exercise and of course cooled down.

We cooked up steak for an early tea as tonight we are heading back to Parkes Radio Telescope to get some pictures of it at night.

The journey back up to Parkes only takes us 25 minutes, we were only 100 yards or so from the entrance, when all of a sudden we saw this Kangaroo in almost a single action jumped a 4ft high fence, bound across the road in front of us and straight over the top of another 4ft high fence on the other side of the road! Our mouths were open with awe with the ease that this Kangaroo cleared both fences and the road, all in its one stride.

While watching we saw some kangaroos (I know - how weird is that?), this appeared to be Daddy, Mummy and Joey Kangaroo. The joey was so cute, and kept looking up at us. At one point the Joey was appearing to have a rummage in it’s mothers pouch, “Have I left my crayons in there Mum?”

We watched the sun go down and cast lovely hues of Orange over the radio telescope. One by one the lights came on and one by one the stars started to poke through the sky that was gradually turning to night.

I had set the camera up while it was daylight so just stood around and waited until it was dark, all the while just taking random shots, just so that I could get “the one”.

On the journey back from Parkes to Forbes we were listening to our favourite UHF Channel 40 (the truckers swearing channel) and heard that there was a “BT on both sides of the Railway track at Forbes”. We were not certain what this mean, until we neared the level crossing and saw all of the Police flashing lights then realised as we were being pulled onto the side of the road for a random breath test.

No problem with Andy as he rarely drinks, in fact was quite pleased with himself really; of course the test was negative. The Police officer said count to 10 whilst blowing into the machine, and only got to 4 when the officer said “fine”. One thing to be aware of in Australia, the Police are very hot on drink/drug driving and do have the right to pull you over randomly; we have seen many of these roadside tests, but this is the first time we have been pulled in.

Into Maccy D’s for a quick Skype session, I spoke to Mum and Dad and Andy spoke to his Mum, then back to camp as it was now bed time, a late night for us at around 11.30.

Andy was already in bed when I came back from the amenities block, I usually have a torch with me as these places are not always well lit and I do like to see what I am stepping on (i.e. making sure there are no snakes lurking), this time I saw something move and there it was, the largest centipede I have ever seen in my life!

Tomorrow we move on to the Blue Mountains.

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Photos

The Dish
We are watching the sun go down over Parkes Radio Telescope.

Hoping and waiting
Andy hoped they would come and ask us if we wanted to look around. No chance, we just waited for sundown.

Roo's
Sorry we promised no more roo photos but we could not resist... tee hee!

moving around
this is quite something when this dish moves to a new position. It makes you appreciate how huge it is. 1000 tons shifted by electric motor.

Searching
Just about stopped.

Found and Dark
Stopped in its new position it is now dark enough for a good photo.

Just another view
Looking down the road into the compound.