Christmas Day.
Had a lovely Christmas Day with family and because it was a child free weekend for us both, we had decided to head off in the afternoon for 2 days, this time going to the Barrington Tops. We hitched up the trailer and headed off at 4.15pm with zero kms on the clock, thinking we would strike a lot of christmas day traffic, getting to the freeway and on the freeway, we were surprised to hardly strike any at all, getting to the start of the M1 in only 30 mins. We had quite an easy drive up the freeway, with the traffic flowing the whole time, we needed diesel as the light was soon to come on, so pulled into a service station and went to a pump that had no diesel, so had to leave as we couldn’t reverse the trailer as there were other cars queued up behind us. It wasn’t long after we left here that the fuel light came on, so we pushed on to Stroud, hoping they would have a service station open. We were wrong, they had a service station, but it was closed, so we had to actually make our way towards Gloucester, hoping we made it without running out…which we did, make it that is, both holding our breath the whole time. We filled up, which was a great relief, the time being 7.30pm, we had done about 80kms after the light had come on.
We then headed off the main road, onto Thunderbolts Way, making our way up towards Barrington Tops, with the temperature gauge slowly dropping, we left Sydney with it reading 27 degrees, it was now reading 19 degrees. We had decided on staying at Little Murray Campground, which was off Scone Road just before Polblue Campground. It was fairly slow going, as it was extremely pot-holey, travelling along Thunderbolts Way, which then turned into Scone Road, which turned into Barrington Tops Forest Road and then eventually turning off onto Barrington Trail which lead us to Little Murray, it was now about 8.30pm and very foggy, very hard to see in front of you, even though we had our spotties on. We finally arrived at Little Murray, where there was one other family there, we drove around the campground finally settling on a site, slightly tucked in the corner, then getting stuck into setting up the trailer…the temperature gauge now reading 12 degrees and it felt like it too!! Set up and in bed by 10.20pm, which compared with our other recent arrival times, is actually quite early!!!!
Boxing Day.
It didn’t seem like very long after we had made it to bed and fallen asleep that a herd of brumbies galloped past, making an awful lot of noise, not only with their hooves, but also neighing wildly as well, was quite incredible to hear, as it really sounded like a large number of them. There were many other animal sounds durning the night, Jason hearing one early in the morning that he said sounded like an elephant…I didn’t hear it though.
We finally rose about 10.30am after a very lazy morning, both of us going back to sleep, which doesn’t happen often! It was a beautiful morning, with not a cloud in the sky, we had breakfast and coffees, which was made with my new christmas present from my BBF (Rose), a new coffee maker, as I was so sick of the other one only making nice coffee sometimes…and let me tell you, this new one works an absolute treat!
Jason headed off on a ‘burl’ on his bike for a while, so I sat in the sun reading magazines, it was warm, then the sun went behind clouds and then it was cool, then the sun came out again, so warm again. He came back after about 1.5 hours, saying he could have kept going albeit a flat back tyre, which we couldn’t fix as we didn’t have the right gear for it…no more ‘burling’ for him on this trip. We had lunch, then went for a look around the area in the truck, also to get some fire wood while we were in the state forest, there seemed to be a few clouds rolling in. We went and had a look at Junction Pools campground, which wasn’t very big at all, there was one family there with their dog, this in a National Park. The river looked a fair way down from the campground with no real visible access to it either. On we went, this time to Mount Barrington to see the view from the lookout, which after we got there, wasn’t much at all as it was so overgrown with trees, that you couldn’t really see anything. The track in wasn’t really well used, as it was fairly overgrown, through the middle and on either side, it was one way in and one way out, so out we came. Headed to Thunderbolts Lookout, which had a lot more of a view as there wasn’t the over growth of trees, you could see the cloud or fog rolling in over the hills. We set off back to the campsite and on the way it did start to lightly rain and by the time we made it back to the campsite it was rather heavy, to the point that I sat in the truck and waited for a bit, also watching the poor people who had just turned up try and set up their tarp while trying to stay dry…it wasn’t working for them!
After I finally made it out of the truck, all we could do was to wait out the weather, hopefully, while having a beer and reading. It was a bit cool, so I had a jumper and long pants on, so much for summer, although we were at altitude, no excuse really, I say! The rain lasted about 2 or so hours, we were just hoping it would stop so we could have a fire…which it did eventually and a fire we had, even though there was a bit of wet timber to start off. We had a great, roaring fire by the end, enough to keep us warm, well me anyhow, as away from it, it really was cool. Had a mexican wrap for dinner, with a bit of left overs from a previous nights dinner. We settled in, in front of the fire after having done the washing up, watching the wild life go by…this time, we actually saw some brumbies and a few kangaroos, also as another truck pulled in, lights blaring, we heard noises coming from the bush behind us, to look in time and just make out two brumbies bolting past, not sure why the bolt though. Finally went to bed at about 10pm after a rather nice, relaxing day, afternoon and evening.
Sunday 27th December.
Jason was awake earlier than myself and went outside to grab a few magazines to read back in bed and said it was very foggy outside, so he grabbed the camera and took a few shots before getting back into bed to read, saying it was fresh out there as well. It wasn’t long after he got back in bed that it started to rain, it hadn’t rained all night, but was now, nothing else to do, but fall asleep again, which we both did, not waking until well after 9am, another nice sleep in for us!
As Jason couldn’t ride his bike, we sat around and sorted out some drawers in the camper trailer, trying to make some more room and also getting ready for our two week trip away in mid January, we had two coffees while sorting this out as our new coffee thing is just so easy and makes a much nicer coffee. All done with the cleaning and sorting, Jason cooked an omelette which was more like scrambled eggs, so we had it in a wrap, which was delicious. We washed up then started to pack the camper trailer up, before more rain set in, which we were told that it might do, after a visit from the Ranger, who was very pleased to see a dirt bike that was registered. Finished the packing and was heading off from Little Murray at 1.30pm, just as the rain was starting to fall more steadily.
Had a great run home, bar a few stops, one at Moonan Flat Pub for a beer and a bowl of hot chips with gravy, it was a like a mini Dargo, with 4WD trucks and touring bikes out the front. We headed off after that, stopping at Scone to refill the tyres, which took forever, as the compressor must have been rather small, this stop took us nearly 20 mins! Our next stop was at Singleton Bunnings for a few essentials which we had made a list for, we managed to get everything we needed, then headed off to Sydney. We didn’t really encounter much traffic at all on the way home, a slow steady stream, arriving home by just after 8pm having done roughly 684km for the whole trip.
Although the weekend had rain and a lot of fog and was fairly cool for summer, we will make the journey back to the Barrington Tops. We went in via Gloucester and left via Scone, with Barrington Tops an equal distance between the two, no one way was faster than the other to get there we decided. It isn’t a place that you can visit during winter as the NPWS close a lot of the tracks due to snow, from June to October…way too cold for a camping trip then anyhow, especially when the temperature during summer got to as low as 5 or 6 degrees. The tracks were great, it wasn’t hard 4WDing at all, just very very muddy and very very pot-holey, we think it is worth the trip up there.