April Has Seen The Kilometres Increase

April has always been one of my favourite months — what with my youngest son’s birthday; who happens to be turning thirty this year and it’s the first birthday we haven’t spent together, which hurts my heart a little — but an added bonus this year is that my divorce was official on my son’s thirtieth birthday; which also happened to fall on Good Friday.

Which brings me to another reason April is a favourite of mine — Easter!

With Easter and Anzac Day being so close together, I took annual leave for the three working days in between all the public holidays, effectively giving me eleven days off. Nice!

This will allow me to rack up a few additional kilometres in April.

After leaving Bingara, I travelled 61 kilometres to a small town called Barraba. Here I spent the week prior to Easter in a caravan park situated on the Manilla River.

Not a bad caravan park. My site was pleasant and situated right next to an old style ‘outhouse’ which was in working order, so it was like having my very own private ensuite — although the amenities could do with a good clean.

A number of friendly permanents live in this park and it was pleasant to have a daily chat with some of them.

The town of Barraba consists mainly of one main street, which housed the local IGA supermarket. Produce, especially fresh vegetables were a little sketchy but I was able to make do.

There was also only one working cafe in town and their breakfast was very simplistic. Basically, a choice between a bacon and egg roll or bacon and eggs on toast — that’d be fried eggs or scrambled as poached eggs were too hard. I have to admit the coffee was good though.

Sunday I decided to head out to Horton Falls National Park, a fourty kilometre trek on gravel roads and got some 4 wheel drive practice, as the roads were rough after all the rain they’d had a few weeks prior.

I don’t know if it was my incredibly bad sense of direction or if the tracks that were still too wet to attempt — being a solo traveller I didn’t need to get stuck, especially as there was no phone reception in the Park — but I couldn’t find the actual Horton Falls unfortunately.

Still, I gained some experience on the rough gravel roads and saw some beautiful country, so I wasn’t too terribly disappointed.

Monday, I changed directions and headed south. Passed the beautiful Barraba Silo Art, which I found amazing and take my hat off to the artist that painted the silos.

From the Silo Art, I travelled further south and turned off onto another gravel road and followed it out to Split Rock Dam.

This dam supplies the water for the Barraba and surrounds community. I spent most of the day trekking around the dam enjoying the scenery, birdlife and peace and quiet.

On arriving back at my caravan I decided to wet my line in the Manilla River and to my delight caught a number of decent sized fish. Unfortunately, they were the pesky Carp — not really suitable for eating — but fun to catch all the same, as they put up a mighty fight, although not for long as they do tire easily.

As it’s illegal to throw Carp back, I left them on the riverbank for the birds to feast upon. Within a couple of days there was not a fish, scale or bone in sight and I’m sure the birds were content.

Sadly, I didn’t catch anything that allowed Grizabella or I to enjoy a feed but it was fun all the same.

With Good Friday being a Public Holiday, I didn’t have to work and was able to enjoy a sleep in, which was nice. As it’s getting a little cool here in the mountains, getting down to nine degrees at night, I was in no hurry to climb out of my warm bed on Friday morning.

After a lovely telephone call with my son to wish him a Happy Birthday, I took a short drive out of town to Adams Lookout, which overlooks the town of Barraba and is named after one of Barraba’s early settlers, Alfred Adams.

Easter Saturday today and I hitched up and headed south again. I only travelled a short 48 kilometres to the little town of Manilla, which is on the banks of the Namoi River.

I have to wonder how these towns were named because Barraba has the Manilla River but Manilla has the Namoi River — why wasn’t Barraba named Manilla since it sports the Manilla River?

So far I have to say I am impressed with this little town called Manilla, although I’ve only been here a few hours. The caravan park is well maintained, the amenities clean and I managed to find a cafe open at 2pm that served me a coffee — unheard of in most Australian cities and especially hard to find in a country town — goes without saying this cafe was super busy. I really don’t understand why it’s so difficult to find a cafe open at 2pm in Australia, but there is one in Manilla and for that I’m very grateful.

My next update will give you more details about this cute little town and my future travels but I’ll give you a few teaser pictures of the lovely Namoi River.

Almost six months on the road and I’ve racked up close to 3,200 kilometres and experienced so much of this beautiful country I call home.

So until next time, have a safe and Happy Easter everyone 😊