The Israels Australian Adventure

Couldn't believe it when I saw on Facebook (as you do) that my older Canadian cousin and his family were coming to Australia for Christmas and New Year.  Even though we saw Don earlier in the year and the rest of the family last year in London.   After lengthy messages back and forth - Tuesday 19th December was chosen in Broadbeach.  David and I haven't done the Gold Coast yet as it is just over an hour away from Nat & Robs.  We had decided we can go and explore this area in Jan/Feb when the schools holidays are over. Don had rented an apartment on the 13th floor of one of the high risers.  As he said, Broadbeach reminded him of Las Vegas with the casino and a huge shopping mall just across the road.   It was lovely catching up with them and reminisce.  The twins seemed to be enjoying themselves too but decided not to join us for dinner.  Don booked the local surf club for the 4 of us ,which is always a good meal.  It was fun to...

So we had booked to stay in Boggabilla for the night as it was $50 cheaper than Goondiwindi.  That way we had two 4 hour drives to get home.  Still on the track of painted silos and water towers.  It was going to be quite fun as the roads we were following kept crossing the border between Queensland(QLD) and New South Wales(NSW).  QLD is an hour behind NSW so we decided not to keep changing our clocks until we left Boggabilla tomorrow or it would drive us nuts.  We saw lots of emus and passed through more little towns - one of which didn't even have a petrol station and we warned there wasn't one for over 100 km. Thallon We had options to drive here and for once chose not to go on the unsealed road as the cyclone was hitting the north coast and we might get rain so let's be sensible for a change.  We saw the silo as soon as we drove into town but the water tank was another story.  We had a choice of the hotel or the cafe which were opposite each other....

We loved Lightning Ridge.  It was so different.  Down to earth people who had given thought to what they could do to make the area attractive to tourists.  So the events/activities were quite unique to them.  After all no point in finding precious opals if you have no-one to sell them to.  On our way into town was an emu statue - it was enormous called Stanley.  Its body was once a VW beetle to give you some idea of its size. Although our plan as we drove into town was to book into the Big4 Holiday Camp first, as it was after 3pm when we arrived, the tourist information office was just on the right, so in we went.  The ladies were lovely.  They were impressed with the research David had already done on the area and we paid our $1 to get our copy of the coloured car door routes map.  They also gave us a map of the town with all the activities numbered (as most towns have done) but they also gave us a separate sheet which listed the numbers in ...

Jerilderie (9-10 Dec) We had booked to stay at Jerilderie for the night as they were one of the towns which were held up by Ned Kelly and his gang.  I had wanted to go to Glenrowan where he came from but it is half way between Melbourne and Canberra and good 2 hour drive from either.  So when Christine mentioned about Jerilderie it seemed an excellent choice for us.  However, we had forgotten we would be going on the weekend and everything was shut, except the bakery - so lunch was good and the air conditioning most welcome.  Haven't managed to work out why some towns are shut on Saturday but they are. We knew the town had a walk around map which told the story of the Ned Kelly gang coming into town so we walked around and found as many of the posts as possible.  The walk was really well done and a lot of the original buildings still standing.  By 12.00 we were really hot and tired and so decided to see if we could access our room early as I still needed to...