Star-gazing!

At different times over the years, we've visited Dubbo Observatory and remember those experiences as being cold - very cold! Nick and I were guests at a Central Coast astronomy gathering also - and that was another cold evening. 

We dressed more warmly for our Charleville Cosmos Centre visit, which meant wearing jeans and jumpers rather than thermal under-wear and ski jackets!

I'm sure being the right temperature added greatly to our appreciation of the evening - and we did thoroughly enjoy ourselves! 

Nick knew how many zeros a trillion has - which really impressed the presenter - and we were all super-impressed by the observatory's slide-back roof!

There were four telescopes in use, which worked well for the number of people in the group.  Two were height-adjustable, so I stayed with Vaughan at that end (with other shorties)!  We saw the Orion nebula, jewel box, Saturn, Jupiter and the moon.  Daytime sun-viewing (through a filtered telescope) was available as was an introduction to the night sky (without telescope).  It would have been nice to attend more sessions - and I expect we will at some other time but can highly recommend this one!

Dual-fuel dinner

When we booked our evening star-gazing experience there were no vacancies for the earlier 7:30pm session, so we agreed to 9:00pm.

The later show meant we had ample time to cook dinner between the two activities.  Even so, we opted to use the dual-fuel stove rather than the wood-fired BBQ as our heat source!  Chorizo had been on clearance at the local IGA, so we jazzed up some bolognaise sauce for an easy dinner.  There was time to eat dessert around the camp-fire before changing into warmer clothes and heading back to town for our (supervised) star-gazing.

Easter Bilby!

Last year Nick, Vaughan and I watched a DVD titled "The Bilby Brothers".  I'd borrowed it from our local library but if yours doesn't have it, you can buy a copy here and support the Save the Bilby Fund!

We were very impressed by the documentary and decided back then we should visit the bilbies while staying at Yowah. Nissa actually suggested seeing them at Easter and as it happened, we did - well, almost! Each Thursday afternoon there is a special bilby encounter and we booked to join a tour during our visit to Charleville. We paid a little extra but thoroughly enjoyed seeing a bilby from only a metre away - and getting a look behind the scenes of the breeding facility also. It was a very interesting afternoon and a wonderful prelude to Easter!

Wings of time ...

Petrol was around 20 cents cheaper per litre at Charleville than what we've been paying locally. 

We hadn't been able to fit our jerry cans into/onto Elmer for the trip but we made sure that both his tanks were filled to capacity (and topped up again before heading "home").


As an aside, Nick received a discount when paying for the fuel.  The friendly cashier applied a "senior discount"!  Understandably, I was hugely amused when reading the receipt - though less entertained when I was offered an application form for concession stamps at the Post Office!

Many years ago, somewhere in the Northern Territory, Erin had her photo taken beside a road train.  Back then she was not much higher than one of the wheels.  When she spotted this "proper" road train, we saw a compare/contrast photo opportunity for the family albums!

Flitting around town!

We were woken by the sun and breakfasted in the camp kitchen.  Last night's campfire was still smoking a little and the morning pace was pleasantly laid-back.

We all had showers and got organised to head into town. Charleville is known as the "big smoke" of the region and we enjoyed browsing the retail shops and having a great range of grocery items at reasonable prices.

Erin and Nick had scripts filled at the local chemist, we took advantage of the Crazy Clint's sale and picked up a few op-shop items also. We all enjoyed our bargain shopping!


As we drove up to Charleville we saw many butterflies along the way.  There were lots on bottlebrush bushes around the camp-ground, particularly one near our tent.  Nick and I counted four larger varieties as well as one or two much smaller types.  I took some footage and will share that soon.

Evening Star cheffing!

We arrived at Charleville in the late afternoon. Our first stop was the tourist information centre as one of the local caravan parks offered camp oven dinners and yabby races on Wednesday nights (one yabby for every two dinners purchased).

In truth, we were keener for yabby racing than the dinner but in any case we were a couple of weeks too early for the season, so saved our money!

(Of course, the alternate plan is a DIY substitute - catch some Yowah yabbies and hold our own races)!

Given we would be dining in, we stopped to pick up a few ingredients then headed a little way out of town to the Evening Star Tourist Park.  We were warmly welcomed and chose a campsite an easy walk from both the amenities block and camp kitchen.  The camp kitchen housed two modern gas BBQs but Nick opted to use the more rustic 44-gallon drum, wood-fired alternative!