Well, we left Narrandera and drove to Elphinstone, home. We stopped at a little cafe for our last breakfast. It was very nice. On the way home we stopped at Shepperton to do some supermarket shopping. We also stopped at The Big Strawberry. At the shop there they were actually selling Queensland strawberries, because their’s were ruined by the frost. We got home about 5o’clock.
Ahhhh, home sweet home!
We have had a wonderful and educational experience!
Thankyou, everyone for reading thekellytravelblog We hope you have enjoyed it.

Today we drove to Dubbo. When we got there we went to the zoo. It was really fun seeing all the animals like wild African dogs, rhinos, hippos, monkeys, giraffes and otters as well as a lot of others. I liked the otters.
Tess

Oriental small-clawed Otter. They are very active!

We didn’t do much at all today, just a relaxing day. In the afternoon we went for a drive and saw a cotton ginn. There were big rolls of cotton wrapped in yellow plastic. Later on, in the camp oven, we cooked cheese and bacon damper, savoury scones, pineapple cake, and some lamb stew! It was really fun and tasty! While the stew was cooking we went for a walk across the bridge. The bridge used to be part of the main road, but now it is to weak to hold cars. We saw a female darter. Because there was no sun for her to dry her wings with, she was flapping them! We also saw lots of pelicans.
For dinner Mum cooked stew in the camp oven. It was delicious! For sweets we had the pineapple cake, that mum made earlier, with custard.
Tara

Bacon and cheese damper!

Today we went on a paddle boat called Jandra. We went along the Darling River and saw lots of birds like pelicans, darters and ducks. In the afternoon we went to the exhibition center. We watched a short show about Bourke. We leant that Henry Lawson once said that ” if you know Bourke you know Australia”. After that we went to see Fred Hollows grave. Fred Hollows was a eye doctor who helped a lot of Aboriginals and other people from poor countries. His grave was quite unusual it had a big big rock instead of a head stone and the Hollows family invited you to go on it. We had a camp oven dinner.
Tess

Today we left Queensland to go to Bourke in NSW. On the way we stopped at Cunamulla. When we got to Bourke we went for a drive to see what there was to do. There is an old post office that was very nice. We came back and went to the dinner that the caravan park puts on. It was steak, sausages and veggies as well as pikelets for sweets. The money raised at the outside dinner went to lots of different charities in the town. There was a person doing poems as well as somebody talking about Bourke. There was a raffle as well and Dad won third prize and got a new set of screwdrivers!
Tess

Today we went to another Bilby session. At this one we got to hold a joey wallaroos. It was wrapped up in lots of blankets. It looked like a joey kangeroo. It was really fun holding the joey. The joey was found in the mother’s pouch but the mother had been hit and killed.

Because they were playing the same movie as last night, we were allowed to go and sit outside, quietly and wait for the Yellow Footed Rock Wallabies. They are very shy, but they came out. There were were heaps of Yellow Footed Rock Wallabies!

We went into the shop to pat a Bilby. We had to wash our hands first so it didn’t get sick. It was really soft and really cute! It got fed some worms then got put back to bed because it is nocturnal.

From there we went back to the Corones Hotel, for a tour. It is a very grand hotel: every window having lead light glass; Italian tiles were on lots of floors; rooms with ensuites and one with a roof top patio; and a grand staircase made of silky oak! It was built in the 1920’s and took 5 years to complete. It was owned for over 50 years by Harry Corones, who was a Greek migrant who came to Australia in 1907 with only £10 (about $20). It has not changed much over the years.
Lots of famous people have stayed in the hotel over the years.

One of them was Amy Johnson who was the first person to fly from America to Australia in the 1930’s. When she landed in Charleville she celebrated by having a bath in Champagne. It took 13 large bottles of champagne to fill the bath. Mr Corones was a clever business man and he bottled the used bath liquid and sold it to investors as a souvenier of the famous lady. When they were rebottling it, the found that they filled 14 bottles so they hope that the extra bottle was just warm water that Amy had put in the bath!

The hotel tour ended with scones and jam.

After dinner we went to the Cosmos centre, where we looked at some stars and planets. Some of the things we saw were: Alpha Centauri – binary star, which is like two suns close together, over half the stars we see in the sky are actually binary stars; and the Jewel Box, situated close to the southern cross, was a collection of about 200 colorful stars that can only be seen with a powerful telescope.

Tara and Tess

This is the joey wallaroo.

A yellow footed rock wallaby.