Nice NARRABRI

The 102km from Moree to Narrabri (Population 13,350) was dead pan flat !!! Lots of wheat and cotton fields and potatoes in between !!! Narrabri township is one long strip and easy to visit. The gem of this town is the 44km nearby Mount Kaputar National Park reaching a summit height of 1558m with magnificent views of flat NSW towards Queensland. Bundy and I trekked a total of 15km over 2.75hrs climbing to 450m (half the height of Sydney-Katoomba) with unbelievable views as you will see in this post... Once we descended, we headed to the 6-piece Radio-Telescope Array run by the CSRIO to stare into deep space to find distant stars and galaxies by sound and not sight... Get this. Each dish is 22m wide but the signals are computer combined to give an equivalent virtual single-dish of 6km which can never be built. Our last stop being Yarrie Lake, a 3km circumference and 1km across lake made by a huge meteorite crashing here around 12,000 years ago and filling with rain-water since that time. Narrabri sounds far away but a great place to visit.

DC3 MOREE

Moree is hot. Isolated and hot. So glad that we spent 3hrs and 9km kayaking on Lake Inverell before driving the 142km from Inverell to get here. Our kayaking was under cloud, cool and serene and featured 72yr old German-born Heinrich who was the highlight with amazing stories of his life and his unequivocal devotion to Inverell and Australia. Moree (Population 7,383) was empty given New Years Day - no people, no cars, no activity but this was terrific since we were able to shoot all the surprising well-looked-after art-deco buildings - a real surprise for a town so close to the harsh outback. The biggest surprise - the cheapest 400g rump I have ever had at a mere $25 in a real retired DC3 aircraft - amazing and my greatest joy since it is the oldest passenger aircraft still flying privately since 1936... Moree - who said it is in the sticks - it is positively airborne !!!