Gunnedah, steeped in history

Gunnedah claims Dorothea McKellar even though nobody is sure that she lived here. It is believed that she holidayed here and that this area inspired her most famous poem, My Country.
The best known verse goes like this (with apologies for any memory lapse)

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of drought and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me.

In Gunnedah I was impressed with the other acknowledgements of history. In the Pensioners' Hill Park there are a number of sandstone sculptures detailing the indigenous and the modern history of the town.

I followed the Poets' Walk around town. Copies of famous poems have been set up in appropriate places. 'Said Hanrahan" is in the grounds of the Catholic Church. 'The Bush School' is at the state school etc. I loved the concept but unfortunately they have not been maintained and are hard to find and equally hard to read.

Plans and Dreams

The year 2012 will be the time for me to start travelling again. When I retired from Education Queensland in 1999, I knew I still had to work for a few years. I was lucky to have transferrable skills and when the opportunity to work overseas was offered, I had my first taste of long term travel.

I spent the next five years working, with travel an important part of my life. I had a full school year in Northern Ireland and then another year in London. At the end of each contract and during school holidays I saw a lot of Europe. Another couple of years working on Vancouver Island gave me the chance to see a bit of Canada and an even smaller bit of the US. I got the taste for travel.

At the back of my mind was always the belief that when I got home to Australia I would really explore my homeland. I had always used the school holidays to travel when my kids were small. We had visited most of the east coast and got very good at budget travel, staying at cabins in caravan parks and doing the occasional home exchange.

Since retirement I have done a few trips. With my friend Jan, I flew to Darwin a couple of years ago and drove down through the centre to Alice Springs and Uluru. Last year I went to a party in Melbourne, taking three weeks to get there and two to get home. Then earlier this year my friend Annie travelled with me for a couple of weeks. That was good as she is an experienced camper. She pitched her tent beside my campervan at night and taught me some survival essentials. Later, I went off to Agnes Water and the Town of 1770 for a few weeks and practised some of those skills. An occasional weekend away is all I have managed in the second half of the year. So I am now ready to load up the camper and hit the road.