Saturday 18th Feb Went for a drive to Nimbin today, what a beautiful drive it was - with all the rain we have been getting it is all very lush and green. Met up with John's cousin Joan (who lives there) and had a walk around the town - called into the Nimbin Museum and noticed the unusual signs along the street. (yes that is John and Joan in the combi van in the Museum). Very busy place with a lot of Hippie type people around but just as many tourists there as well. We were having an afternoon snack the other day when this Eastern Water Dragon came right up to us and when we threw down some biscuits he come right up to us to eat them. We were very supprised to see how ... read more

Monday 6th Feb Short drive to Tenterfield today after crossing the border from Qld, just a short drive out of Tenterfield - had a few short showers of rain but nothing heavy which we were thankful of as the road was quite windy but beautiful rain forest. Checked into a lovely small old caravan park (Tenterfield Lodge and CP) which has new owners and the park is looking great - the office is in the old house which was built in 1875 as a pub and is now accomodation for backpackers. Visited the Old Cork Tree - the seed was bought out from England and planted in 1861 - believed to be Australia's largest cork tree. Teneterfield is a lovely old town with beautiful gardens everywhere - I suppose the high rain fall helps everything to ... read more

Thursday 2nd Feb Decided to have a day off and went to check out Condamine and surrounds - check out the bridge over the Condamine river, this bridge had about 4 metres of water running over the top in last January floods, the river rose 15 metres - hard to believe isn't it. Checked out the Caliguel Lagoon (localy known as Condamine Lagoon). Very pretty place for a picinic but the water was still quite high after the downpour a couple of weeks ago when some of the roads around Condamine were closed due to flooding. Pretty flowering water lilies at Dogwood Creek in Miles. I have included a before and after photo of a cottage John painted at the Condamine caravan park - this cottage was under water in the floods and is an original ... read more

Friday 14 January - After John settled into a good days working I decided to head into the big smoke to do some shopping (Miles is the closest town for shopping with two supermarkets!!!!!). I did my shopping and started heading back to Condamine when I noticed the heat gauge on the car was very hot and as I was only 3klm from Miles I turned around and then spotted a truck bay so pulled over. A nice man pulled over when he saw the hood of the car up and gave me lift into Miles to see if there was any RAC in town but had to call the RACQ out from Chinchilla (46klms). He then brought me back to the caravan as it was quite hot and I had shopping in the car, then ... read more

Friday 6th Jan Went for a drive to Sapphire and Rubyvale today. Noticed that there was a lot of caravan's and shanty's in both of these places then heard that most of the land is leased for mining and the people leasing the land are not allowed to build permanant structures as when they have finished mining for Sapphires and they return the land back to the shire the land must be free of structures. Did a underground mine tour at Miners Heritage - great tour by a young lady who lives in Rubyvale who came to town with her boyfriend on an around Oz trip to visit family and 5 years later are still there looking for the elusive Sapphire Still very hot - it has been 38-41 degrees most of the time we have ... read more