Category: Ruby Tuesday

Ruby Tuesday #3 Cranky Rock

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I think my favourite stopover in Ruby so far was at Cranky Rock. It is a recreational reserve not far from Warialda in North Western New South Wales. The camp ground attached to the reserve is run by a caretaker who each night in the cooler months lights a big campfire and provides nibbles for the campers to enjoy as they socialise together. My husband and I loved meeting other campers, sharing stories and learning more about future travel options. Some campers were old hands and other like us were first timers. It didn’t matter. There were also chickens wandering around and if you found an egg they laid you could keep it.

Cranky Rock is made up of various giant boulders that balance on each other and make an enclosed natural phenonium. It was so peaceful my husband and I spend over an hour down in the valley before moving on to explore other parts of the bush.

We definitely plan to go back to this spot when we are out of lockdown and can travel again.

Written for todays Word Of The Day Challenge – Enclosed. Thanks.

Who’d A-Thought It Lookout

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I loved the name of this lookout when we first drove past. How quirky I thought.

Who’d A-Thought It Lookout overlooks Quirindi. It is at the top of Ray Carter Drive, and offers 360 degree panoramic views of Quinindi, the Liverpool Plains and the Great Diving Range. The day we visited was clear and you could see for kilometres in each direction.

The surrounding area has some of Australia’s most fertile soil. Crops of the area include; sunflowers, canola, wheat, barley, sorghum, cotton, oats, flaba beans and corn. I love the vivid yellow of the canola just before harvest. You can see it in the top photo.

Ruby Tuesday#2 Quirindi

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Well, our first trip in Ruby was memorable. It started when the Antarctic blob hit Australia. This was a blast of extremely cold weather that brought snow to parts of the East Coast that hadn’t seen snow in over 15 years.

During out first trip Ruby moved about an inch to the right and was obstructing the driver’s mirror. This meant upon arrived in Quirindi Caravan Park, we had to take her off the ute. This was a double challenge. Partly because the weather was freezing, and secondly, because I am not great at directions. We could get her either centred or square on. But we struggled to get her both centered and square on quickly. After about half an hour, we had succeeded and we were inside celebrating preparing for our firat night in Ruby with the air conditioner on heat thawing out.

The quote “Life is what happens when you are busy making other plans” by John Lennon totally described our first Ruby trip.

We had planned to spend our first night in Ruby, at Wallabadah Free Camp. This is half an hour south from our eventual destination. When we arrived at Wallabadah, we discovered the free camp was closed. Later in fact, we discovered all free camps in Liverpool Plains Council Area were closed due to COVID. The advantage of needing to change our plans was that w2e stayed in a paid caravan park and had electricity so we could keep warm.

Quirindi is a small town on the North West Slopes in the Liverpool Plains Shire. The area itself has a rich agricultural history and the main street pays respect to the area’s heritage by displaying the original stock brands on the footpath.

Photo credit; Liverpool Plains Attractions

Our overnight stay in Quirindi means there is still more to explore. Over the next week I will share with you the attractions we visited.

  • First Fleet Memorial Gardens
  • Who’d A-Thought It Lookout
  • Bob’s Shed
  • Peter Brock World

I hope you enjoy getting to know parts of Australia’s secret gems through the Ruby Tuesday series.

Ruby Tuesday # 1

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The past few months have seen my husband and I enter a new stage of our life. We bought a slide-on camper and began preparing to become grey nomads, a much more complicated task than I first realised. So many things to learn and yes we made a few rookie errors.

Over the last fortnight we took Ruby (the camper), on her maiden voyage, travelling around New South Wales. Yes, she is red. Actually she is the only red PUMA slide-on in Australia so there is no hiding. If you see us on the road stop by and have a chat.

On our first night free camping at a truck stop, we got chatting to the young lady behind the counter and she informed us that she had seen us earlier that day parked by the side of the road about 100 kilometres away. She said Ruby had made her smile as she had thought to herself how “cool” she looked.

Travelling in Australia during COVID is a weird experience, because of all by border closures. In New South Wales, we are trapped as you can’t cross the border to Queensland, Victoria or South Australia without a valid exemption, which are nearly impossible to get. Our limited travel options however, weren’t a problem to us. We just found small unusual towns to visit, now we are not limited to finding accommodation enroute.

To celebrate our new life style, I have decided to create a regular new blog feature – Ruby Tuesday – to share our adventures, interesting tidbits and learnings from our travels in Ruby. I hope you enjoy armchair travelling Australia with us.