Travelling to retreat (Going back in time)

Day 25 of my August blogpost a day challenge

A long one today

One of the reasons I wanted to do this blogpost a day August challenge was so that I could catch up on some events that happened AGES ago.

One of those being Sue's and mine travels to and from the Scrub Stitching retreat at Baradine in New South Wales, Australia. Scrub Stitching was back in April. Sue was very good and posted every day but I never quite got to it.

So here I am - I really want these travels documented!

Sue picked me up from Melbourne Airport (Tullamarine) and after snatching a coffee and finding the car, we were off.

Our first stop was Echuca, about 2 ½ hours away, which is a historic river port town on the banks of the Murray River. 

We stayed at the Campaspe Lodge, which was very close to the river. It was a lovely peaceful spot - until the birds arrived at dusk!

It was close to the Port of Echuca so we had a leisurely stroll along the river bank, marvelling at the Paddle Steamers, other boats, the Flood Tree and detouring for an ice-cream :-)

First night excitement - and the joy of finding GF ice cream cones —

The next day we went on a cruise on one of the old wood burning Paddle Steamers, the Pevensey. The cruise was about an hour and it was lovely.

Steamer accommodation from approx 1915 - people must have been a lot smaller then, it all seemed so tiny!

'All The Rivers Run' was filmed on the Pevensey —

Lots of houseboats!

Trying to perfect our selfies —

Afterwards we wandered around the town, and had a really interesting time. 

(Bottom right photo is a Koala crossing to keep them off the road)

The next day we drove to Forbes. It was a big day's driving but we managed to find a couple of interesting spots to stop at —

The painted silo at Mathoura - we had been there before but approached it from the back of it so we didn't recognise it at first!

We also stopped at the information centre at Deniliquin ...and stumbled upon a modern quilt exhibition which we quite enjoyed - we spent longer than we should have there.

Sue was inspired at Narrandera -

We met up with the Deana and her USA contingent at Forbes - we had a lovely dinner together (no photo sorry) (whew, you'll be saying)

The next morning we all travelled in convoy along the Lachlan Sculpture Highway. This is a permanent sculpture/art trail along a100km length of road.

The first one, the Goana, had us excited about what else we would see -

They were all so different; some we needed to read the information about them to understand them, but we appreciated them all!

A late lunch at Condobolin before the girls headed on to Baradine. Sue and I opted to spend the night at Narromine.

The next day we were on familiar roads and heading to Scrub Stitching at Baradine.

We arrived!

(And I wrote about retreat *here* and *here*)

'til next time,

happy stitches,

Raewyn