Friday 29th May
Rained quite heavily during the night and am pleased to say no leaks occurred. As the trailer was on a slight slope I decided to try and level it up with the stabilising legs. Pity I hadn’t read the handbook before trying this as I found out they weren’t designed for this and I snapped the holding lock nut and bent the thread. It was now hanging there like a limp....... and as a result every time we walk about inside it rocks around as though we are on a yacht! Help was at hand from our neighbour who produced the yellow pages and gave us the names and addresses of where we could get it fixed. We would have to arrange to do this when we were hitched up and on our way out of town. To cut a long story short the part has to be ordered in and couldn’t be done until Wednesday or Thursday of next week. At this rate it will take us years to get around OZ! As Beatrice says it all bedding down time and we are learning as we go along. Of course we also ran out of gas which really impressed Beatrice as I had said it was full. So much for the $2 dollar shop gas gauge I bought. I saved the day as we used the electric grill we had packed as a backup. Needless to say I was outside in the cold doing the cooking, which I am told was right as I hadn’t checked properly. Beatrice had started off with a cold but was getting better; it was now my turn as I started to feel a bit of a cold coming on. With our maps we set off for Nundle (an Aboriginal word for “mouth” and probably applied to the mouth of the Nundle Creek where it flows into the river Peel) a little village of 200 people which owes its existence to the discovery of Gold in the 1850’s.Diggers flocked to the area when the precious metal was discovered at nearby Hanging Rock in 1851 http://www.visitnundle.com.au/ Beatrice also knew about it being famous for the Nundle Woollen Mill. On our way we passed the
Rained quite heavily during the night and am pleased to say no leaks occurred. As the trailer was on a slight slope I decided to try and level it up with the stabilising legs. Pity I hadn’t read the handbook before trying this as I found out they weren’t designed for this and I snapped the holding lock nut and bent the thread. It was now hanging there like a limp....... and as a result every time we walk about inside it rocks around as though we are on a yacht! Help was at hand from our neighbour who produced the yellow pages and gave us the names and addresses of where we could get it fixed. We would have to arrange to do this when we were hitched up and on our way out of town. To cut a long story short the part has to be ordered in and couldn’t be done until Wednesday or Thursday of next week. At this rate it will take us years to get around OZ! As Beatrice says it all bedding down time and we are learning as we go along. Of course we also ran out of gas which really impressed Beatrice as I had said it was full. So much for the $2 dollar shop gas gauge I bought. I saved the day as we used the electric grill we had packed as a backup. Needless to say I was outside in the cold doing the cooking, which I am told was right as I hadn’t checked properly. Beatrice had started off with a cold but was getting better; it was now my turn as I started to feel a bit of a cold coming on. With our maps we set off for Nundle (an Aboriginal word for “mouth” and probably applied to the mouth of the Nundle Creek where it flows into the river Peel) a little village of 200 people which owes its existence to the discovery of Gold in the 1850’s.Diggers flocked to the area when the precious metal was discovered at nearby Hanging Rock in 1851 http://www.visitnundle.com.au/ Beatrice also knew about it being famous for the Nundle Woollen Mill. On our way we passed the
Chaffey Dam which is the main source of irrigation for the whole area and is a back up water supply for Tamworth. Vast areas of what would have been very dry land was very green with the growing of Lucerne ,hay and corn all irrigated with massive watering arms going up and down the fields and huge sprinklers. The dam was opened in 1979 and has been the saviour of the area as without it the rain could not be relied upon to grow the crops. It was sad though to hear that the local logging industry had just closed down with the loss of 200 hundred jobs at an average o $1000 a week going into the local economy, it‘s hoped that it will open up again one day. We did see many holdings and houses for sale whilst we were driving about which might have explained why there were so many. In Nundle we visited the woollen mill to see how it’s all done, with machines that were built over 100 years ago and still going strong. The Mill operates 48 weeks of the year 4 and half days of the week closing at 1 pm on Fridays. We visited at 10 past one! Never mind we were given a personal run down of how it all works by a very enthusiastic part owner who had been partly responsible for getting it all going. The wools produced are very fine and when made into cardigans etc are quite expensive. (See the web site) They also have machines that produce 200 socks an hour and they sell them all. The old machines he says are better as they were built to last. We drove up to Hanging Rock for the view over the area and then off into the state forest where we could see the logging that had been going on and now was all abandoned. It was getting late so we made our way back to little home for a hot meal and a whisky mac. (Medicinal purposes only) Earlier on in the day I had been able to get my Telstra wireless broadband up and working in a Telstra shop as the phone number on the one I had from Sydney to get it connected had been disconnected. (Pretty clever of them really especially since they are in the business) So on Saturday I should be able to get on line and hopefully get this on the blog. We settled down I amused myself writing this and Beatrice read. Quite a cold evening down to 8 deg however it had been a beautiful day with the temps up in the low 20’s.
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