Wednesday, October 10, 2012

Wed 10 Oct - Parkes NSW

Our first morning Campervanning, we woke up to a glorious cold, but very still morning. Very nice indeed.

After breakfast, we drove some 50 kms north to Peak Hill to check out their old goldmines.

These were somewhat sloppily advertised as Tourist Goldmine, which we thought was very bad marketing and reflected badly on the place which was very interesting indeed.

5 open cut mines, mined as recently as 2002, big holes dug into the ground for sampling (some went a very long way down). A bridge had been constructed over some of the deep holes, and yes, some were ery deep indeed.

And best of all, it was all free.
After wandering around in the dust and "heat" of Peak Hill goldmines, we decided that it was time for a cuppa. And what place would be better than Bogan Weir. Great name. And a lovely place it was, although it did have that feel of a place where the local hoons would congregate Friday and Saturday nights.

 
After the mid-morning cuppa, it was time for the big event of the day, checking out "The Dish". It is locatated on the same highway north of Parkes. Absolutely fantastic. What an amazing thing.
A long story about Apollo 11 and the moon landing as expected, and lots of references, photos and stories from the movie, as one also would expect.
It appears that it is still used around 85% of the time for monitoring various space activities.

And, again, it was free. Suits us just right :-)

We had our lunch within the compound, and were severely pestered by these quite good looking birds, but with a sound like a seagull. We quickly dubbed them "Seagulls of the West".


On the way back from to the camping ground, we decided to stop a McDonalds and utilise their free w-fi. Bad move. Tuesday's "synopsis" disappeared somewhere between our attempts to get it uploaded. And Hans is not a McDonalds fan at the best of times... Curse!!
We swung by Mitre 10 to get a chain for the campervan (a trick learnt from Di's dad, where the chain is hooked up between the 2 front doors so that neither door can be opened) and a few other things.

Dinner was BBQ steak (for Hans) and lamb chops (for Di).

Post dinner, when dark was setting in, there was a rattle from the tree just beside us. 2 very cute saall possums had decided to look for goodies there.

A late change was forecasted and overnight the rain started, but was gone in the morning when we woke up.

 

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