Travelling to Gunnedah

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We decided we'd make our way north a little inland this time, so turned off the M1 before Newcastle and drove along the New England Highway. These are old mining towns in the Hunter Valley - Maitland, Greta, Aberdeen (where Highland games will be held the first Saturday of July, too early again) and Muswellbrook - full of interesting old buildings and nice green countryside. Outside Muswellbrook we saw a sign to Hunterbelle cheese and remembered the young couple who owned the cheese factory had been on My Kitchen Rules last year. We called in and had a cup of coffee and tasted some cheese, buying some cheddar and some fudge.

The road from Scone to Murrurrundi is called the Horse Capital of Australia and Emerites own hectare after hectare each side of the road full of beautiful racing horses. We stayed overnight at Murrurrundi and had an early start this morning, driving to the old gold mining town of Nundle. There were two places I wanted to visit, first the old building of Odgers and McClelland where old style home goods are sold - kitchenware, garden tools, enamel ware, brushes and brooms etc. I could have gone mad but limited my spending to just a few things.

From there it was to the Nundle Knitting Mills. We'd been there before and watched the old machinery carding, and spinning the fleece. The wool is very soft, there are a lot of merino studs around the area.

We made our way onward, stopping at the Caffey Dam where 'augmentation' is taking place, the dam made higher and a new higher bridge built, to the Country Music Capital - Tamworth - where we had lunch and a look around then continued on the highway to Werris Creek and Quirindi, all on the Breeza Plain - very flat country with mountains in the distance. There were sheep and cattle but I think mostly grain is grown in the far distant paddocks judging by the number of silos we passed.

Gunnedah calls itself the Koala Capital and we were told when we booked into the caravan park, that there was a koala high in one of the trees – indeed there was, zonked out of course. Gunnedah is quite a big town with all the shops and services. We equipped outselves with the leaflet of what to see and drove up to the lookout called Porcupine Hill, where 360° of Gunnedah and surrounds were spread out below – ‘a vision splendid of the sunlit plains extended’.

The family of poet, Dorothea Mackellar, owned several properties in the Gunnedah area, including “Kurrumbede” and “The Rampadells” where Dorothea spent quite a bit of time. She wrote two poems of the area – Burning Off - ‘ ..They're burning off at the Rampadells .. ’ and Dawn - ‘.. At the dawning of the day, on the road to Gunnedah ..’. We sought out the statue of Dorothea on her horse that's in a park here. Tomorrow we head to Moree.

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Photos

'the vision splended of the sunlit plains extended..'
from the lookout - Gunnedah surrounds