Gismo Queen and her King

Black Mountain to Tamworth - Tuesday 2nd July 2019

It was cold last night. Yes, we are getting further south but I think it has more to do with the elevation here - they had snow here a few weeks ago!


So there was no hurry to get up this morning, until the sun was warming everything up. We went for a walk up to the trout ponds, where although Deano is trying to keep his fish numbers up, he is doing it in half the number of ponds due to the drought.
He also had a pretty big storm, almost a mini tornado, sweep through in February and destroy a lot of his netting. But he is a very optimistic sort of bloke so he just keeps going on. He is now also trying silver perch because they grow better in the hot weather whereas trout grow better in the cold - both extremes in weather are prevalent here.


We had elevenses in the camp kitchen overlooking the stocked fish pond where you can throw a line in. Clearly, this was going to be my best opportunity to catch a fish after the last few days but even I thought this might be too easy. I remember my parents taking Andrew and I to a trout farm in the Dandenongs in the late '70's and we both caught heaps. Back when I thought I was a fisherman....
Dean then took us through his processing plant and explained how he uses every element of the fish. It was very interesting and he has some great ideas for furture production, marketing and development of the family farm. We wish him all the best.


It was 12pm before we hit the road, so we only got to Armidale for lunch. For a large city, the lack of caravan parking was terrible. Not that Launceston does it well - despite my best attempts. We had a pleasant lunch in a little cafe at the park and then hit the road properly.  We stopped for fuel in Uralla and then headed down to Tamworth.


There's not any freecamping in Tamworth so we're in a caravan park, but down the back on the river where we can still have a fire and don't have anyone around us. I did a quick trip to the shops then we sat around the fire until I got up to prepare dinner (outside - curry cooked inside leaves the smell for days!)  and we planned our next couple of days here.

posted by Tracey @ 9:51 pm