MOT Tour Day 79: Cowra to Home

Early start for a long day to home and a fuel fill before leaving Cowra revealed an old friend and a happy omen of home. The only available petrol bowser was #14.

Coming through Canowindra we thought we might see hot air balloons aloft as the town was hosting their annual balloon festival for the weekend but there was no action.

Nearly 100kms in we stopped at Molong for a coffee (me) and a back stretch (Sue). Longer days in the car mean more frequent stops to keep her back from going into spasms. The coffee was good at the Wildflower Cafe, a cafe we have used before.

After morning tea, we motored on to Wellington, intending to travel through to Dunedoo for lunch but were thwarted by a road closer and detoured to our usual route through Gulgong. With fuel consumption close to the line between anticipated remaining fuel and kilometres left to travel, we topped up and then moved north to Coolah.

Just north of Coolah, the rest area on the Black Stump Way was a synchronistic stop for a late lunch. It would be our last stop before home, just as it had been our first stop on the outward journey, way back on Australia Day.

Coolah to Tamworth across the black soil plains and the villages of Premer, Spring Ridge and Caroona to Werris Creek was old stamping ground. "In another lifetime, one of toil and blood, where blackness was a virtue and the road was full of mud" (Bob Dylan). When I taught at Tambar Springs, hundreds of years ago, this was a familiar escape route to the relative sanity of the large regional centre of Tamworth.

We reached home in late afternoon. The grass was long and the air inside musty but despite the joy and wonder of the previous eleven or so weeks, it was good to walk into the familiarity and ingrained welcome of home.

I'll leave summation to a postscript video to be forth coming but it has been a stunning tour, where everything went to plan, everything was exciting. We buried some demons but that hardly mattered because the experiences we have added to our already full collection, will remain vivid well past any recollections of failed attempts.