Lunch at Gilgandra

Having said that our Friday evening in the town of Forbes was quiet, the night was less so. The motel was next to the railway station and at some point not long after we retired a train that must have been about 5 miles long went past, followed by a gathering of noisy hoons somewhere nearby who kept up the revelry for hours according to Lib, although the recall is vague to me who was tired enough to sleep well in spite of it.

After a travellers pantry breakfast in the motel we visited the info centre in Forbes in the old railway station building where the life story of bushranger Ben Hall was prominent. A free movie of 20 minutes on the re-enactment of Ben Hall's brief criminal career and violent death was informative and entertaining and a visit to the cemetery was the result. Apparently Ben Hall was a good man until perverted by corrupt police which seems a similar story to the folklore of Ned Kelly. I don't doubt the veracity of it.

We visited 'The Dish' somewhere near Parkes where we enjoyed morning coffee and reached Gilgandra for lunch, a picnic from the esky ( the makings brought from Gembrook) in the park near the town swimming pool. It was warm to hot but pleasant. We turned off the Newell Hwy here taking the road to Coonamble so that we could relate to Rickyralph next time we see him. He has been visiting there and his relatives ever since I have known him (50 years) so I wanted to take a look. It's also good to get off the main drag a bit. By now the drought, which was noticeable previously, was cruelly obvious, with no hint of green, and little grass, even dried and brown, and hardly any stock. Desolate. The roadside was littered with bottles and cans it looked like God had forsaken this part of the world. Amazing it was to me that there were floods in Coonamble a year or so ago but I reckon it would not have rained a drop since. The Castlereagh River was not flowing and was but a sad series of waterholes in which some hardy kids swam and fished.

The Dish

Coonamble

 We then drove to Pilliga through the scrub. The roadside litter became appalling, and as we approached  Wee Waa we came into irrigated farmland and cotton crops. We stopped at Narrabri and took a cabin in a caravan park where we had a good rest and cooked up the meat we had brought from Gembrook for dinner. Narrabri looked prosperous, a base for agribusiness on a large scale and an eye opener for a couple of southern hillbillies.