Thunderbolt Lookout NSW

It was a bit of a later than usual that we headed out of camp this morning. We stopped at Glen Innes and had a look at the Standing Stones that is a National Monument to Australia’s Celtic Pioneers from 8 Celtic Nations - Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall, Wales, Isle of Man, Asturias and Galicia (Spain) and Brittany (France). For those who don’t know Mireille is half Bretons. The Celtic Bretons are descendants of Celtic Britain's who fled from the invading Romans and settled in what is now France. The 30 or so 17 tonnes of granite rock were placed here in 1992 to represent the 24 hours of the day, North, South East West, and summer and winter solstice. The town also hosts an annual Celtic festival the first weekend in May.

The town is rich in historic buildings of which we admired some on our walk.

We then shopped to fill Busters fridge and continued in our way to an overnight stop at Yarrowford in the Beardy Waters Heritage Park Reserve, named after two bearded stockmen who led the first settlers into the area.

As per most of the past mornings, Buster’s inside temperature was 4°c. As we had internet the BOM told us it was -5.3° felt like -9.4°,so maybe officially our coldest start to the day! Anyway it didn’t take long for the lovely sunshine to warm us up with the help of the diesel heater and we were off to our net destination. Just after Deepwater we veered off the New England Hwy to Torrington, as small township which had prospered in the late 1880’s due to tin mining. For us we were drawn here for a couple of walks. The first one was a 2.2km return walk to Thunderbolts Lookout named after a bushranger we first became aware of  back in Uralla. The views were amazing. 

We then drove to the Mystery Face picnic area and did a 3km loop walk through some interesting granite boulders with some remarkable rock features including the hog, Westminster and Mystery Face. 

Having thoroughly enjoyed this area we doubled back to the highway and made our way to Tenterfield. 

We strolled along the main road with its various historic buildings. 

The Tenterfield Saddler achieved its fame through the song written by a famous local, Peter Allen, as a tribute to his grandfather. 

From here we had to make a decision which way to go… Bald Rock NP or Giraween NP… the later won. As it was getting late in the day we stopped at a rest area in the NSW Queensland border town of Jennings. 

Today for the first time we met someone else with an ATW motorhome similar to ours. The amazing thing is that when we were planning building Buster we had saved a photo of their truck to show others an idea of what we were building and it was them… not only that but they originate from France… ooh la la! What a coincidence.