A quiet peaceful night's sleep at Lake Keepit. After vacating our site, we drove beyond where we'd walked last night to a lookout with expansive views over the lake and glimpses of the dam wall. We then slowly toured the eastern side of the lake where there is feedom camping allowed anywhere along that part of the lake. The tents and caravans were all about 200m apart. One of the caravaners was flying his radio controlled model sea plane which was interesting to watch. The couple, who are from the Central Coast chatted to us for a short while. One of their sons had a Tiger Moth radio controlled model plane too. There is also a gliding club on the hill behind, but we didn't see or hear any action from them, though we did see some glider trailers arriving last night - may have been too calm that early, not enough thermals.
From there, we went into Gunnedah. Morning tea, a quick pop into Woolies, a wander through the Christmas Fete in the Town Hall...lots of hand made stuff...many hours of work represented...lots of different community groups represented. Next was to do an interesting "Poet'sTour" around town - it was supposed to be a driving tour but as many were near the CBD on Saturday morning, we decided to walk to as many as we could. The poems are aimed at giving people an idea of life in country Australia. Because of where we could park the van, we started at the end of the list. We found the Lyrical Loos - with poems read continuously over a PA system, and the loo doors engraved/carved with bits of country type poems. Going in reverse we could not see the next 3, found one, couldn't find the next one...walked to the Visitor Information Centre to ask if it was still a current thing - found a newer leaflet - it still had the ones we could not find, and didn't have the one we had found! The lady said they are getting ready to reprint the booklet we were using and she'd have to check it out because we were the first ones to go to the VIC and say they couldn't find them. There were a few on our walk back which we did find - one in particular was very moving. After a late lunch and a lot of steps we gave up and did the Driving Tour of the town which tells you about places you're driving past. It was confusing in places but we saw a lot - including another poem & 2 lookouts. The expanse of the plains the town overlooks is amazing! In fact, we've since driven about 70kms across that flat plain to Quirindi via Curlewis (where my Grandpa & Grandma Ayrton once lived).
Late dinner tonight at the "Who'd a thought it Lookout" above Quirindi with views for kms in almost every direction. Robyn got some brilliant sunset photos - actually they look better than the real thing! (Amanda, remember sunset the enhancement we had on Norfolk Island? This was just like that.) We are planning to stay here for the night, on top of the world! Today's steps 12,283. Doug promised he'd buy me an ice cream when I do 20,000 in a day, so I'm still WAY short of that :-(
