Our Trip Begins - Sydney to Dubbo and Onto Bourke

After an inevitable slow start due to having to take our daughter, Bec's car to the mechanic to fix her car door window winder that broke down the night before, we left home a bit after 9.30am on Monday the 24th July.

I wanted to go back to the public weighbridge to get the vehicle and van weighed in their loaded status. It all weighed up correct, ie, the van was on its limit, not overweight but will have to work out what to do if I want to take a generator with me next time, and the vehicle was well under weight, due to the Lovell's GVM upgrade I just had done to it. Very happy.

That meant that we really were not 'on the road' till about 10.30am, but what a good feeling it was.

Our plan was to do a lot of kilometres till we got into new territory, however, due to a late start we only made it to Dubbo. This trip has started in a very similar vein to our 'Second Big Trip' to NT and WA as we stayed at the same place in Dubbo as we did two years ago on that trip. We stayed at the property of a member of the Campervan Motorhome Club of Australia (CMCA). Some generous members with room to spare offer their home up for other members to stay at. Keen followers of my blogs may recognize these photos as similar to the first post of the blog of that trip two years ago. We were able to hook up to water as well. Perfect.



It was a freezing cold night and we did not have power, but not to worry, we had installed a diesel heater since our last trip. Oh, it was so good. Beautiful and warm at night and turn it on again in the morning before getting out of bed and wait till the van gets warm before getting up. We are getting set up better all the time.

Turned the TV on in the morning but no picture. The TV had been playing up for a while and now it was stuffed. But hey, the TV worked for the previous night and so we got to watch the Master Chef Finale, Praise God, He was looking after us. Being in Dubbo it was a good opportunity to replace it so after some phone calls we went to Harvey Norman and bought a replacement and made sure it was working. So it was another slow start, not leaving Dubbo till 11.15am.

We tried to make Barringun over the QLD border and stay at the pub caravan park and have a meal there but time beat us. Don't like driving at dusk with all the roos around. So we stayed at the Bourke Kidman Park which we have also stayed at before.

On the way we went through Nyngan. Two years ago we also went through Nyngan and I mentioned in the post for that trip that I had heard that the Bogan Shire (of which Nyngan is the main town) had decided to build a 'Big Bogan', complete with singlet, thongs and esky. I thought that was a classic. I had since heard that they had build it so I could not go past without getting a photo.

What a beauty, the 'Big Bogan'. Just a tip, if you are looking on a computer you can click on the photos and enlarge them.




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