This morning we set out heading east from Dubbo on the Golden Highway on another glorious blue sky day. Chilly again to start with, but the sky was absolutely cloudless and the sun was shining. Rather than taking us into Denman to cut across to the New England Highway at Muswellbrook the SatNav suggested a minor road to Muswellbrook from Sandy Hollow. This route took us via Castle Rock which was scenic and the Muswellbrook open cut mine area which was not. What a bloody big hole in the ground that is!! We learned later at the Tourist Information Centre in Muswellbrook that the mining activity is completely unrestricted these days and the tailings are getting higher and higher. Most of the old locals have moved out of the area so there is no-one left to ... read more

This morning we packed the car and set off for Dubbo. Now that we live on the northern side of the city we found it very easy to make our way to the Hume Highway via the Western Ring Road. If we still lived in Hallam we would have needed to start an hour earlier! Our first stop was in Shepparton where we tracked down some of their Moooving Art - a public art exhibition featuring life-sized 3D cows. Moooving Art pays homage to the strength of the dairy industry in Greater Shepparton. The region produces a large percentage of Australia’s dairy exports, making the cow a perfect choice for this exhibition. Moooving Art was initially seen as a unique and innovative way to increase the district’s dairy profile, but it also provides opportunities for established ... read more

If it was not Sunday when we arrived in Dubai (I think it was, just) it was definitely Sunday (local time) when we departed Dubai at 2.40am Unlike on our journey over we were not able to walk from our arrival gate to our departure gate, we needed to take the train between terminals. Even after the time spent travelling between terminals we were able to spend a little bit of time in the Emirates Lounge. We took the opportunity to drink plenty of free mineral water and walk around a bit before facing up to the longest sector of our journey, the 13’15” leg from Dubai to Melbourne. During the night? I’m not really sure that it actually was night because we were flying towards the sun, but all the shutters were down and the ... read more

This morning we drove over to Ashton (-under-Lyne) in the rain. We parked the car in the park and ride car park and then just sat wondering how we were going to get to the tram stop without getting soaked because it was absolutely chucking it down by this stage. So we sat ... and we sat ... and we even contemplated giving up on going into Manchester and returning to Stalybridge! Fortunately the rain let up and we were able to make our way across to the tram stop ... just in time to see a tram arrive and depart without us. The next tram was due in 10 minutes so that gave us plenty of time to work out how to buy our travel cards from the machine. At least here we can buy ... read more