Day 21: Gunnedah > Glen Innes
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.
Again, the reader might find the frequent references to such locations slightly bemusing, but I’d counter such bemusement by pointing out that such centres almost invariably offer large quantities of parking space and toilet facilities along with useful information, so once we’d parked the car it was a matter of trekking off in search of the place where we’d eaten five and a half years before (or, failing that, a suitable alternative).
That quest wasn’t as easy as it might have seemed, given the fact that in 2005 we hadn’t fallen prey to the siren song of the Visitor Information centre, and had obviously, as it rapidly became clear, parked somewhere else last time around.
Those memory factors also kick in when you’re tapping out the details close to a fortnight after the actual events.
The Visitor Information lady wasn’t exactly a fountain of information when it came to lunch, seemingly inclined to point us towards the nearby bowls and RSL clubs which probably says a bit about the usual clientele passing through the centre, so we headed off towards the mall in search of a cafe, restaurant or similar operation.
The memory and fortnight later factors mean I don’t recall the exact details of the option we eventually chose, but their version of the standard big breakfast was enough to fill the gaping hole and ensure we didn’t need a huge feed of tuna pasta when we arrived at the overnight accommodation just south of Glen Innes.
After lunch we had a n hour or two to wander round the Armidale CBD, not quite following the historic walk laid out in the leaflet we’d acquired along the way, which gave me the chance to belatedly spot the previous visit’s lunch venue and Madam the chance to capture images of historic buildings and impressive church structures.
Given a few minutes either way en route, we may well have avoided the coincidence of ourselves, a slow-moving vehicle and a speed camera that had us anxiously scanning the incoming mail over the past week or so, but we didn’t, and hindsight is, as they say, invariably 20/20.
Still, despite that minor drama we made it into Craigieburn Cottages on the outskirts of Glen Innes comfortably before nightfall, and there were late afternoon photo opportunities for half the party while Hughesy finished tapping out the details of the three days we’d spent in Canberra.
Tuna pasta and a bottle of red aren’t the greatest food and wine match, but we were out of chilled white and the outside weather wasn’t white amenable anyway.