Day 49 Overhead someone saying there was a storm on the way so, as the tent is not completely water proof, after breakfast we covered it with a tarp. Pottered around Dubbo CBD in the morning and did some organising including putting the car online to be sold and caught up on some long overdue entries here. Afternoon spent checking out some of the animals in the Western Plains zoo. In general, we are not particularly big zoo fans but so many people had raved a...

Day 48 Our last major day of driving from Miles in Southern Queensland to Dubbo in New South Wales. We waved Sean, Roma and Ariana off before we departed Miles as they headed off on the 2.5 hour journey to Toowoomba to buy the girls a motorbike. Shortly after we left having spent a relaxing few days in good company and eating far too much! On the way down saw that the town of Roma, just 140km west of Miles was bracing itself for flash flooding and roads into ...

Day 47 It starting raining really heavy last night and continued most of the day, they got 60mm of rain today. Usually this is great news as it fills up the tanks which is their only source of water. However, it is easy to see how the flash flooding that cut them off from town as the road flooded and that hit places like Toowoomba in December can happen. The ground is pretty impermeable most of the time and the water will just run off the surfaces and into cre...

Day 46 Lazy day hanging out with cousin Paula and kids. Got over-fed us as usual with huge T-bone steaks for dinner. I reckon Paula will do well running the cafe she is planning to open. Made some 15's (or 28's as Sean Toohey called then) which will only be known by the Northern Irish readers as noone else seems to have heard of them. For the uninitiated, they are a type of cake/slice with marshmallows and digestive biscuits and one of the few things I can ma...

Day 45 Headed NE from Bourke along an unsealed road into Hebel, just over the Queensland border. Along this hour or so's drive saw the highest density of wildlife so far... kangaroo, wallaby, emu, fox, wild pig, cows, sheep, goats and lots of geese and birds. Managed to get through without hitting anything in our car which was quite a feat given the number darting out in front of us. As we had stopped before in Hebel Michael was keen to go back to have the 'Bu...