Next stop is a 4 night stay in Tamworth. A town of 65,000 people and the second largest country music town in the entire world, second only to Nashville.
We thought this might be a really nice spot to stop after Tamworth, but damn it was hot! Plus we were in a spot with next to no shade. It was alright here, but not a lot to do.
Sunday, Oct 1st – (Day 178)
Next stop Tamworth! Todays drive was a nice quick one, about 1h30m in total.
Along the way we drove through a random town called Uralla. We noticed they had a farmers market on so decided to drop in for a quick look.
Turns out it was a decent size market and they even had a stock market on, with people bidding on animals like roosters, ducks and other types of birds. We also saw a ton of dachshunds too, they must be a popular dog to own around here. It was like being back in 1960.
Adam grabbed himself a cupcake then it was on the road to Tamworth. We got in around lunchtime and had our fruitloaf bread from Woolworths for lunch.
This park looked a little run down and we were unable to get a spot in the shade, so it could be a long few days.
We decided to go for a drive into town and they had what looked to be a Bridge Mall on steroids. It was a hive of activity and retail looks to be thriving here.
After strolling around for a while, we then drove out to a Shell Express to fill up and get a new gas bottle, then got some more raspberries from Big W, then headed back to the park.
Unfortunately we thought we were sold a dud bottle, so went back to Shell to replace it. But our worst fears came true, it was actually our sodastream that was cactus, so we will have to do a repair job on it now, or get a new one.
We had a nap then cooked some tea, then spent the evening watching the NRL Grand Final in the caravan. It was going to be hard to top yesterdays AFL one, but the NRL was even more of an epic.
Penrith won a threepeat, coming back from a record margin to snatch the game at the jaws of death. Neither of us know the rules fully, but it was still pretty exciting.
We ended the night playing some boardgames online with Jack, then headed to bed at a time that was early for our standards.
Monday, Oct 2nd – (Day 179)
Today was a public holiday in NSW for the NRL Grand Final, so there wasn’t a whole lot open, or many things to go do and see.
So we decided to chill out at the caravan park all morning, having to create some makeshift shade by putting the boot roof up and hiding under it. Damn it gets hot here!
By now it was getting on, so we went for a walk to the Woolworths around the corner. We were both starting to feel run down again with some kind of cold, so the rest of today was basically going to be the rest day.
The rest of the afternoon was spent resting, napping and bumming around relaxing. Not much else we felt like doing.
Also, tonight was the big Catan tournament! A best of 3 series with us against Varun and Jack.
Linda ended up taking out the crown with an exciting victory, taking out the $60 voucher and inaugural title. It ended with some controversy with Jack cracking the sads and rage quitting. Ah well.
We ended the night watching episode 7 of Billions, finally after a week and a half of attempting to.
Tuesday, Oct 3rd – (Day 180)
This morning was much like yesterday morning, just chilling out at the park, like we so often do. Like yesterday, it was super hot with no shade.
So we found some shade behind the caravan and setup our little table and played some boardgames. We tried out one of the new games called The Arctic which felt like chess on steroids.
It might be okay but damn it was hard to understand. In the end we packed it up and played one of the other games, Executions. But it started getting too windy so we called it a day.
After lunch we headed back into town and went to a movie – The Creator. We didn’t know anything about it, but it turned out to be a pretty good movie about AI taking over in the 2060s. Not a bad way to escape the heat too.
Then after the film we did a walk around the mall, looking for a little clock to replace the microwave one, then we got some Cold Rock and headed back home.
For tea we reheated some spag bol last night and then we played some more games with Rach and Varun. Then like last night, we watched another episode of Billions before calling it an early night.
Wednesday, Oct 4th – (Day 181)
Our last day in Tamworth of, which we were not too disappointed about, this caravan park was starting to annoy us. The hot sun with no shade, the noise, plus the long distance to the toilet block.
However today was meant to be a bit colder with rain scheduled, so we thought we might do some exploring before it started to rain. But first we went to Woolworths to stock up on some lunch and tea items.
Our first stop was the Oxley Lookout which gave unreal views over all of Tamworth. We stayed up here for a while soaking it in, then noticed black clouds were starting to form.
So we headed to The Welders Dog Brewery in town and got a stout and some chips, then played some boardgames. We learnt there was a trivia night on tonight as well.
There was also a trivia night around the corner at a pub called Wests Diggers, so we decided to go there for a beer as well, to see which one looked better.
On the way it started belting down rain, so we decided to wait it out in an Officeworks store looking for a new clock, then walked to the pub.
Wests Diggers was much nicer with more space and a good ambience. We got some beers and then played a new game. With the weather deteriorating again, we decided to just stay in town and have tea.
There was a pub around the corner called The Courthouse Hotel which was recently renovated and was quite nice. Then it was back to Wests Diggers after that for trivia!
We had high hopes for this trivia, but it was absolute crap. The lady hosting it was bored out of her brain, plus it was really hard to hear her over people talking.
Plus we were getting smashed as a table of two, so we ended up leaving before it finished. The rest of night we huddled in the caravan keeping warm and started the brand new season of Love Is Blind 5.
