NSW Tablelands

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Hello everybody !!! Last place on my Blog was Lake Keepit - for those of you who don't know- it's after Tamworth, heading towards Dubbo. After Gunnedah we stopeed in at the Waterways Wildlife Park - an absolutely delightly wildlife mini-zoo and exceptional value @ $5/head. They had lots of animals and a myriad of parrots of all sizes and colours. Then on to Dubbo where we went to The Old Dubbo Gaol and the Western Plains Zoo. The zoo is just FANtastic - SOOOOO much better than Sydney's Taronga. Spent about 5 hours there!!!. It started to get a little chilly again from there on (we heading south you see!). Some glorious countryside around these parts and VERY green - don't know why a lot of areas are still called 'in drought' and have water restrictions.
From Dubbo we took a quick detour SW to Parkes to see the Parkes Observatory. We expected to be booking in for a night session looking through the telescope at the heavens....but no.. It's only a radio telescope. I never knew that. We settled for a simulated 5-minute skim across the surface of Mars and a trip to the moon (all thru 3D glasses). Back 'on track' then and off to Orange.
Lots of crops appearing now and sheep EVERYWHERE. Rather cold in Orange over the 3 days we were there. The van park in Orange was VERY busy with the spill-over travellers from Bathurst, where the BIg Race was happening that weekend. A little place called Blayney (about 40km SW of Orange had it's worst storm in 40 years - 10" of hail on the ground !!!! ...so they say?
From Orange we went to Bathurst on the Tuesday and stayed 3 nights. Did the obligatory laps around Mount Panorama and checked out a few other local sites. Next day we did a day-trip to The Jenolan Caves - very pretty indeed. The next day we day-tripped to Katoomba - the Three Sisters and a Skyrail trip- and Leura.
After Bathurst we drove through to Cowra and spent 2 days there. The Japanese Gardens there are the largest in the Southern Hemisphere - just beautiful. There is also a MAGNIFICENT rose garden here with over 140 different varieties of roses. The perfume just overwhelms you when you get out of the car !!Cowra is also home to Australia's 'Peace Bell'. For those of you who don't know - Cowra was the site where a lot of Italian/Australians were interned during the War (since we were at war with Italy also). It then also becaume the place where Japanese POWs were housed. The Cowra Breakout is an incredible story in our war history - look it up on The Net. The Japanese were disgraced at being captured and would rather have been killed in battle - so they hatched a plot to escape and die in the process......and many did. There is a Japanese War Cemetery here too.
From Cowra to Young to Yass and now Goulburn. Tomorrow we're going to a large sheep farm to see sheep being shorn etc then off to "The Snow"

Get onto my FACEBOOK page (you'll have to 'join in' and send me a msg from there to accept you as 'a friend') - there's LOTS more photos on there (but no script) - they're SO much easier to upload on there!

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Photos

Apple Trees
The areas around Orange are loaded with apples, cherries, peaches, nectarines, and berries - off course not in season yet - we're always too early or too late!!!

Parkes Observatory
It is in fact a RADIO telescope - not a visual one. BUt, apparently, it's the biggest in the Southern Hemisphere

Mt Conobalas
This is the view of Orange and surround from the top of Mt Conobalas

Mount Panorama
We did a few laps of 'The Mountain' - the views from the top are fantastic. How those guys do the speeds they do is beyond me !!!

View of Bathurst
This is the view from the top of Mount Panorama

The Dragon
One of the formations in the caves - looks like the creature from the movie Alien !!!