Friday, 6 May
While I’m not a coffee addict, there’s no doubt that I need my mug of industrial-strength caffeine to kickstart my morning and that fact was underlined by Friday morning’s events.
The outside temperature meant I wasn’t too keen on sticking my nose too far out of the warmth of the doona, but around six-fifteen Madam sprang into action and I was obliged to follow. My role, after the previous evening’s excursion, was to tag along and act as navigator while Madam headed out in search of koalas to photograph, hardly surprising given Gunnedah’s self-proclaimed status as the Koala capital of Australia.
In the space of around ten minutes I went from a state of pleasant drowsiness to full on which way do I turn mode without too much time to catch my breath as we headed towards Porcupine Lookout.
Given a few minutes to gather my wits we might well have found ourselves a better option than where we eventually parked, heading off to hoof it along vaguely defined walking tracks in search of animals that steadfastly refused to manifest themselves in the treetops.
After that particularly fruitless excursion we were headed out of town around eight-thirty, with Tamworth, Armidale and Glen Innes firmly in our sights.
Those who know me might be slightly bemused by Hughesy’s mention of Tamworth, given its status as Australia’s country music capital, but the road was going to take us through the city and Madam remembered a large guitar somewhere on the road into town from our previous visit en route between the Hunter Valley and Glen Innes back in December 2005.
The route into town this time around, however, wasn’t the same as the previous one, and the guitar, like Gunnedah’s koalas failed to appear as we looked around for fuel, information and the road to Armidale, which was where Madam wanted to spend a bit more time on the ground.
On that basis, having skimped breakfast with a bit of time to go till lunch, heading straight off seemed a better option than looking around for oversized musical instruments.
That 2005 trip had brought us into Armidale in time for a very late lunch, and that visit had done enough to pique Madam’s photographic interest this time around, and it was getting very close to lunch time when we parked the car behind the local Visitor Information Centre.