Ashby to Black Mountain - Monday 1st July 2019
Just recently I wrote about our criteria for the best camp site. Today as we arrived at yet another unique location, we ponder whether we need to add "uniqueness" to the criteria. So far on this trip, some of our best campsites have included the beach, a winery (with dumplings), the bush, on the banks of a river, at a rodeo and now, at a trout farm. We have an outlook over water, we can have a fire (and boy, do we need it!), there's no-one else here, the views are lovely - and there's yummy trout to eat!This morning the sun was rising over the Clarence River as we woke up a bit earlier than normal - it's pack up day. By 9:30am, we were pulling out of our campsite, which included a steep exit, a one way turn and then having to reverse further down the road. No dramas, and soon we were on the Pacific Highway heading south. We pulled into Grafton in time for elevenses and a visit to the dump point. One day, I'm going to write that book about Australia's dump points!! The Grafton one is in the greyhound park - of course it is! Turns out the greyhound races are on for the next three nights so there was plenty of caravans and dog trailers. After coffee, we were on the road again for the biggest bit of our drive.
The scenery today encapsulated everything. We started with coastal, including sugar cane growing along the Clarence River for miles, then drove into a valley, then up into the mountains (from a 9m elevation in Grafton to 1400m this afternoon), then along the ridge all afternoon - in drought country.
We climbed and climbed and climbed, stopping half way up for lunch. The views from our lumchspot were amazing!
Once we got to that 1400m elevation, we levelled out and came into Glen Innes. Here we turned left and headed south down the New England Highway. Just south of Guyra we turned off to Black Mountain. A quick stop on the side of the road for some firewood and then we arrived at Deano's Springwater Smoked Trout farm. We met Deano who's lived here his whole life. He's been farming trout and yabbies for 20 years and have just recently branched out into tourism. He is building some powered sites and has already built a camp kitchen and a shower/toilet block. Good on him for expanding his business. We bought some smoked trout and some pate, lit our campfire and enjoyed the pate. It is going to be cold tonight though, which will challenge us. The roaring campfire kept us warm through dinner, which Jude had prepared this morning (after messaging me from 10m away asking for an onion!) and put in the thermal cooker all day. It was yum in front of the fire, and we lasted until about 8pm before we abandoned the fire for the much warmer diesel heaters in our caravans!
posted by Tracey @ 9:17 pm
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