It rained all night and we woke up to most of the caravan park flooded. The poor people in tents were gone by the time we got up as they were where the puddles were. I was worried we would miss out on the Chambers of the Black Hand with many roads flooded so we rang ahead and it was still open. We did drive through a couple of flooded roads to get there but there were also a fair few other people there that made the effort too. It was a great place to visit...

We started the day at the Artesian Hot Springs which is only 200m down the road from where we are staying. The Great Artesian Basin covers 22% of Australia and this particular bore goes down 1km.They have one big one which is fairly hot and this runs into a smaller shallow pool which is a little cooler. This was great for the kids so we spent most of the time there. We then went back to camp for a swim in the camp pool. It is heated so was also really nice ...

Driving on to Lightning Ridge today, we stopped around halfway at Narrabri. We went to Australia's Telescope Compact Array. It was well set up for tourists with good information around and it was all free and self guided. Playing with the whispering dishes were fun, where two dishes face each other about 50m apart and if you stand in the right position and whisper, the sound comes out clearly for the person at the other end. The compact array is where they use ...