Kempsey 2

After spending a fantastic month in New Zealand to catch up and have lots of fun with our family, and to welcome our 2nd precious grand-daughter we flew back to the Gold Coast on September 6th.
Spent a fantastic week catching up with the family and friends on the Gold Coast. It was a great week we went for a ride out to Ipswich which is a lot bigger town than we had expected. While there we visited the Railway Museum which was a great way to spend a morning and very well set out – with interesting interactive displays etc (I wouldn’t trust Mike or my Dad to drive a train after watching them trying to work out how the simulator worked! Scary stuff!!
On Sunday 13th September we headed South, back down to Kempsey, NSW, to manage the Motel for 3 ½ weeks while the owners go on holiday – they are completing a huge trip starting at the Gold Coast (450km), Roma (500km), Longreach (700 km), Mount Isa (649 km), Tennent Creek (661km), Alice Springs (505 km) Ayres Rock, Coober Peady, Port Augusta then decide how to commute back to Kempsey. Such huge distances to travel in a day. We lent them our Tom Tom and one day they said “they turned it on and the instructions were to drive 680km then turn left – that was the only turn they made that day – amazing ah!
About 3 days ago we were caught in the huge dust storm that hit Sydney and Broken Hill – which is crazy considering Kempsey is 4 ½ to 5 hours drive away from Sydney. So we have spent the last couple of days dusting and cleaning up outside – then the damn dust storm came back again today (Saturday 28th September) – so you can guess what we will be up to again tomorrow. The pool and driveway get into a real mess with the high winds blowing everything around.
Mike got a fright the other day when he went to step into the caravan and caught a glimpse of something behind him – it was a large looking lizard type thing as seen in the photo attached. I have been really lucky so far (touch wood) that I haven’t come across anything scary – long may it last! Mind you last night I flicked something off my elbow – not being sure what it was – then next minute Mike jumped up out of Bed and swotted something off his back – Yep! You guest it – A damn cockroach – gee I hate the damn things and we just can’t seem to get away from them ah! That made it jolly hard for us both to get back to sleep – so I can’t imagine what some of the scary critters around here would do to us should they decide to try and share our bed as well – probably be heart attack material!
We finish here at the motel on the 6th of September – so will be heading to Orange on the 7th where we have booked into a camping ground for a week. We will take in the Bathurst Race – which will be neat! Great! to actually be there, rather than just watching it on TV as usual. We will have a look around all the different sights then think about where we go next!

Kemsey Sunset

The main street of Kempsey during Dust storm

The MacLeay river