Left home around 3pm and arrived as the sun was setting, but dark by the time we had set up (Marg likes the right spot 😏). Very cold tonight, so started the heater, then it stopped. We'll fix it in the morning. Had a very cold night even with 3 doonas. 7 degrees at 3am.

Woke to a beautiful sunny morning, but being in the shade we didn't warm up. Moved into a sunny position to catch morning and day sun (Margs likes the right spot 😏). Fixed heater (fuel blockage). Walked into town about 500m, lovely old forestry township. Watched the forestry workers come and go (the camp also has the forestry depot). A pair of Magpies joined us looking for a feed.

We were the only ones that stayed last night so we had the place to ourselves.

The heater ran well last night so we were nice and warm. Apparently it got down to 8 overnight

Whilst sitting under the awning, the pair of magpies returned, came right up to us as they must be used to others feeding them. When we did not feed them they entertained us with the typical magpie warble.

I videoed it and it is here:

https://youtu.be/66k2iLVmKA8?si=EW7dxJcNZe0BFHse

When we left home initially the brake lights were not working on the van so I fiddled around with the wires a bit and it came good.

But when we arrived here they were not working again.

I discovered, by doing some testing, that the recent adapter that we bought that converts the round socket of the car to the flat plug for the van, was faulty. It is just too loose and only carries power sometimes. So I will try a temporary fix with aluminium foil to get us home. Did that and it worked.

Went for another walk into the town and bought some chips and ate them in a park.

Then took this photo for Jawa (Glen's Brother-in-law. He asked if we had climbed the North Obelisk, as I had sent him a link to where we were staying and he had looked it up in Google maps.

That is the mountain in the background. On Google maps if shows as the North Obelisk but on my topographical maps it shows as Coutts Crown.

Other than there are no tracks, it appears to be all private property so we can't legally walk there.

Good place to put a portable solar panel:

Took our time and packed up and drove to Old Bonalbo. It was only about 30 km but on a very bumpy potholed road partly through the Yabbra State Forest. Plenty of very tall eucalypt.

Arrived just before lunch time to the free camp just off the road beside Duck Creek, that is just before a bridge.

It has a relatively new drop toilet.

A sign board gave a bit of a history of the place as well as some information about an aircraft that had to do a forced landing here in the 1930s. It was a Focker aircraft from ANA airlines that was partly owned by Charles Kingsford Smith at the time.

Where we are camped:

Newspaper article about the forced landing:

Went for a walk just over the bridge and met Marina, a farmer, who was cutting down a whole lot of privet trees that were growing on a fence line on their farm so that they could put up a new fence. She said she had been given a grant to replace fences because of the floods of a few years ago. She explained to me how wide the flood area was.

We are camped right beside Duck Creek that flooded and it is at least 10 meters below us. She said the water was just roaring past in the flood, because of the head water being so large up in the mountains.

We must have spoken for about an hour about all things to do about farming. It is a crop and cattle farm that she inherited from her uncle. Because it's only 300 acres it's not really enough to make a good living out of.