Bulga Explorer get together and on to Goodooga artesian baths

There were 9 Explorers in total at Bulga Recreational area on Thursday night, meeting up for a few days roaming around the Hunter Valley in NSW.

Next day, we stopped in at the Baiame indigenous rock art cave on a private property in Milbrodale. After an initial wrong turn by our fearless leader Tony, we eventually got there.

On the same day we had lunch at Wollombi Tavern and walked around the town later. The little St Michael’s Church there has beautiful stained glass in the windows.

We picked up a bottle of Dr Jurd’s Jungle Juice from the Tavern to enjoy later on.

Rather than go back to Bulga, the group decided to stay at McNamara Park in Broke for the night – another nice grassy free camp close to a great little cafe called Magoonys overlooking the paddocks and hills around Broke.

Our final night with the group was at Grey Gum cafe on Putty Road, which allows camping in the large area out the back and is also popular with motorbike riders. We got the Dr. Jurds Jungle Juice out, and the party started! Didn’t take long to polish it off.

We said goodbye to the Explorer group to go to a caravan park and plug in as we were a bit concerned about our battery monitor readings, as it looked like we were getting very low on power. Thats despite the Nomad having 4 solar panels and 4 batteries with 500Ah. We stopped at Murrurundi caravan park and did some washing and re-synchronised the battery monitor. Then spent a night at the “Track by the Namoi River” free camp. All seems good with the monitor now.

Since we have to wait until next Monday for availability at the Ford Service Centre at Toowoomba for our 3000km service, we have gone a bit further west to camp at the Goodooga Artesian Baths fee camp for a few days. The water is very warm, and there are at least 20 caravans and motorhomes here. It’s a little aboriginal town, with only one community store which we walked to and bought some milk and a packet of chips for tonight’s State of Origin match. Go the Blues!!