I'm back again to finish off our Willow Tree farm stay and add another week of travel!

The owners of the farm where we stayed over the next four days, were people who we all knew from when we went to Norfolk Island on a John Wilson painting trip some years back. Robbie also came to Albury a couple of times to attend the John Wilson art workshop's in Albury that Peter always organised.

Robbie is passionate about her art practice and set up a community art space in Willow Tree a few year ago calling it "Random Rural Art Gallery". Local artists exhibit and meet there to paint together. We met her there in the late afternoon on 22nd May and after having a tour of the gallery we followed her out to the farm, 15 kms from town. Robbie also rents the lawned area on the art gallery property to some wonderful produce and plant stall holders a few times a week and we bought some beautiful produce while there.

Being on the farm was a beautiful restful stopover for us. Maybe not so restful for Peter as this was where he repaired a few issues that were causing him concern with his van. He installed the new bike racks onto the roof of his car (see photo below) and fixed his diesel heater among other things.

The studio barn where we camped for 4 days. (Robbie and Phil's home was just through the trees behind my van.)

Our hosts were a delight and so generous as we had full use of the studio which included a kitchen, a bathroom, a loft dining room, and a huge lounge/studio area with a big Coonara wood fire.

Here we are sitting around the Coonara fire chatting... Robbie must have been over getting another bottle of wine 🍷

I could post many more photo's, but I won't bore you... Loved this one because of the cloud formation. It just didn't look real!! It was taken from the studio.

Robbie and Carol looking surveying the property...

Sunday we took off to Currabubula about 55kms away to attend a large local art show. We were surprised to see the winner of the art show was a young painter from Beechworth who we knew quite well. She used to live in the area and has entered this art show over a number of years and has won a few times. She also won the people's choice and sold one of her other works. We had this photo taken of us all together and sent it off to her and she was pretty chuffed! 😀

Pete, Anne, Carol and Robbie in front of Kathy Ellem's winning painting

It was hard to say goodbye to Robbie and Phil. We'd had such a wonderful time with them over the 4 days with the three D's...drives, dinners and drinks...which resulted in lots of camaraderie sitting around the fire as you do with easy friends. Thank you Robbie and Phil for a wonderful stay.

We were off to Narrabri next morning around 200 kms north, north west and arrived at the showgrounds mid/late afternoon. That night was one of the wettest nights we had encountered and we woke to see water everywhere. Luckily the surface was firm so it wasn't muddy or boggy...just wet! We'd only plannned to stop the one night, but Peter and Carol had a fairly major issue with their 12 volt power over night and had to call an auto electrician in to fix it the next morning. We ended up staying another night so they could confirm everything was working to order before moving on. Their ptoblem turned out to be a fairly scary situation as the wiring to the lithium batteries that run the 12 volt system had burnt out and was shorting the system. It could have easily started a fire, and with the lithium batteries in very close proximity a major fire may have resulted...luckily it didn't.

There wasn't a lot to do in Narrabri but I spent quite a bit of time at the information centre reading up about the Cotton industry. The area is a major cotton-producing region, and much of the industry's support infrastructure, including research facilities and seed production, is located in the Narrabri Shire.

Cotton after it's been harvested and after the recent rains

I added this photo as I loved the artistic nature of it. It can be seen at the left hand corner of the above photo.

This machine was part of the Information Centre display. If you want to know more about the COTTON industry in the Narrabri area, check out the website link HERE.

With Pete and Carol's van now all fixed and working like a charm we left Narrabri after two days and drove to Nindigully. On the way we stopped off at Moree for a break and were all really impressed with the town. It had some beautifully maintained art deco buildings and the streetscape looked fabulous.

We are seeing lots of road trains with huge amounts of cotton bales as well as fields with lots of different coloured casing on cotton bales - pinks, purples, yellow, blue orange etc. Harvesting season is almost completed so although we see the odd field of cotton growing most is now baled up and ready to be transported. It's hard to get a photo when youre driving and it's not always easy to pull over when there is traffic but I got this one when we were in Mungindi of the road train.

A couple of street scenes of Moree

Before arriving at Nindigully we had to cross over the Barwon River at Mungindi, which is the NSW/QLD border town. We parked for a break in a car park near the border bridge. I snapped this photo and didn't realise until I saw it, what a great cloud formation was going on. It's this photo that I have used as the headinbg photo for the blog...

Some reading this may be State of Origin fans...I hadn't even twigged it was S of O season. Pete and I walked up to the Barwon River bridge for a look and came across the flags displayed at the border.

Peter was hedging his bets either way 😃 but I'm about to enter QLD so I'm going to barrack for QLD!!

I'm not any good at AFL tipping so why should NRL be any better. With NSW winning the first round, I guess I'm just not good at tipping😛

Next stop Nindigully pub. It claims to be the longest continuous licenced pub in Australia having had a licence since 1864. There's not much to do at Nindigully, but we stayed for 2 nights!! We free camped across the road with a zillion other campers. We went to the pub for a drink and stayed on for a meal. Probably one of the more ordinary meals I've had in a long time, but the bonus was...the pub is quaint, the staff are super friendly and the atmosphere of the outback bush camp was fun. Pete got his "Pig" fire out, we sourced wood from the area and had a great time just relaxing.

Grant....the head barman...How could you not like that smile?

Another friendly staff member showing off some of the merchandise that was available to buy. I did think about buying one😆

Many of the staff in the more remote areas are young international travellers. The kitchen hand was a lovely young frenchman who was staying for 6 months.

Nindigully is the purple flag at the top, my estimate is we have done over 2000 kms to date

Next stop after Nindiguylly is Roma, but we call into some interesting towns along the route. To be continued in the next blog entry.

Until then, stay safe

Cheers Anne 🥂