NSW Trip Day 4: Griffith -> Dubbo

Millie and I were up early and went for a walk in the dark around the caravan park. Once everyone was up we got on with packing and cleaning up and were on the road again by 10. We bought some mandarins from a roadside stall, then went and saw the house where Tony and I lived when we were first married, then on to the hospital where Caitlin was born, and took some rainy photos in front of the current construction work going on there. We also checked out the main De Bortoli vineyard where Tone used to work.

On to West Wyalong where we had a very quick play in the park before it started raining heavily. We jumped back in the car and had some sandwiches before continuing on. We reached ‘The Dish’ – the CSIRO radio telescope dish - around 3pm and spent a bit over an hour in the visitors centre and in the grounds. I had never been there (possibly one of the few NEW places I’ll be seeing this trip) and it was impressively large (64m in diameter in fact). The visitors centre had some fun and interesting facts and activities about space and the telescope, and an information scavenger hunt and activity book for the kids. The rain stopped briefly enough for us to get some photos of us in front of the dish too.

Kids in front of The Dish

We drove to Dubbo through a massive lightning storm – very impressive to watch from the flat land we were driving through. The caravan park was a hit with the kids, with a big playground and a jumping pillow. We had Indian Takeaway for tea then I tried to remove the remains of a cats-eye bindi from my foot (I packed the car in bare feet this morning and was very careful on the tiny bit of grass I needed to walk over, but picked this up from a bit of gravel. Ironic that after saying to the kids, a few times, that its more dangerous to be barefoot in Griffith because the bindis are nasty, I was the one who got one! If you've never seen one, look at the pictures in this article)

I was happy with the car trip today – this was our longest driving day (except perhaps for the final 2 days of the trip, depending when we decide to leave Sydney) and it went well. New fancy headphones for each of the kids helped, so they could each play their own devices/listen to their own music if they wanted to, as well as listening to Harry Potter 7 on audio CD and playing games, talking about the scenery, and dividing the trip into 3 sections.