Aramac & back

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After leaving Lake Dunn, we headed back through Aramac to visit the Tramway Museum, and to look for the mini bull statues that we had read about being scattered outside various businesses – which commemorates one of the most famous cattle rustling episodes in Australia’s history.

Aramac is one of the oldest towns in the central west.
Originally known as Marathon, the town was later renamed after Robert Ramsay Mackenzie – the first explorer to the area – who carved his name RR MAC on a tree.
The tree was later found by explorer William Landsborough and the name Aramac was born.

Whilst in Aramac, we also wanted to grab a coffee to support local business – and that was an experience all of its own!

Unfortunately, we think we might have picked the wrong cafe (for us!) when it came to the coffee…

An experience..

On walking into the Cafe, it very much felt like being in the middle of someone’s lounge room – complete with a big-screen tv, lounge and coffee table.

A man was reposed on the couch, watching what was perhaps one of his favorite shows, as he needed to pause it when interrupted by our wanting to order.
Trying not to look too shocked, our keep cup was handed over and ‘a latte please’, was ordered.

He wandered over to his kitchen, and started up the coffee machine.
In good time, he bought it back out in our keep-cup, took the $5 (cash not card thank you) and we went on our merry way.

What we also definitely didn’t expect was that it would be made from burnt tasting excruciatingly hot UHT milk.

We have tasted quite a few bad coffees and the Tall One usually manages to drink them, even if the Short One bails up; but this coffee just wasn’t going down at all, and wins the outstanding Award for the worst coffee we have ever tasted (so far!).

The Tramway Museum was just off the main road and is an interesting collection of railway, station life and country town memorabilia.
If big old machinery is your thing, you’ll love this one!

Definitely some amazing photo opportunities, and its always interesting to look back at our history and to see the tools and implements of years gone by, and see how much they’ve changed in such an incredibly short time.

Back to Barky

After heading back through Barcaldine to head further south, we realized it was Sunday (oopsy!) and the grocery shop was closed, so we decided to stay at the Barcaldine East roadside Rest Area overnight, as we’d managed to intermittently add some charge to the batteries during the drive, and we had enough to get us through until we could next plug the bus in to electricity to fully charge the battery system.

There are toilets and bins available for use, and there were a few others breaking their journey overnight as well.
Whilst its right alongside the highway, the noise wasn’t at all disturbing.

As we were packing up and taking the dogs for their final pre-travel walk the next morning, we suddenly heard a man yelling, coming from the toilet block area.

As it turned out, it was a man who had come in late in the evening, and we think was probably a regular and living in his car, and after hearing what he was yelling as threats to us and to no-one, we think he probably had some mh issues, and whilst we felt uncomfortable and left soon after, it certainly wouldn’t deter us from stopping there again.

After leaving the rest area, we went back in to town to get the groceries we hadn’t been able to get the previous day.

The fridge has also not been working very well – it’s a three way fridge and we don’t much like it! – so we’ve not been buying too much food each time we shop, as its difficult to keep it fresh.

We plan on replacing the fridge for a compressor equivalent once we can park-up for a few days and can source a good provider with the stock we want, and we can’t wait until we have a properly functioning fridge!

Until next time – happy travels, and make the moments matter.