Silo Artwork and more...

We said goodbye to Mudgee on Friday and headed for Dubbo. First stop Dunedoo, did you know that we have an Australia Art SiloTrail?? I didn't either but we do and there are currently 49 that you can visit and take pictures of with many more to come. The Dunedoo Silo side one and two were painted by Peter Mortimore and took three months to complete in 2020. On side one of the silos is Winx, a retired champion Australian racehorse, her famous rider Hugh Bowman, who was born in Dunedoo, and her trainer Chris Waller. On side two the silo displays the local fauna and flora. Daniel Krause painted the third and final stage of the Dunedoo Silos. They were completed in June 2021 and are based on his son reading a book in a wheat field. They are amazing and definitely worth going to see, the Winx one though was definitely my favourite.

We decided to go to the movies in the afternoon as James Bond was on, I've never seen any of his movies before, it was a bit scary and I looked through my fingers at times but then my mum did too so I felt ok.

On Saturday morning we went to visit Old Dubbo Gaol, it was really interesting to see inside a jail but some of the sounds and the lifelike dummies really creeped me out. I definitely don't ever want to be inside a jail for real. Dad says that's a good thing!

We also went to see the Royal Flying Doctors Experience, which was so interesting to see. In the Northern Beaches, we are really lucky to have a hospital with an Accident and Emergency Dept close by if anything happens but in the outback they have to call the Royal Flying Doctor as they don't have access to anything nearby. The RFDS covers people in an area of over 7.69 million square km. We saw a movie where people they had helped talked about how amazing they are and how the pilots sometimes have to land their planes in fields. This is tricky because it's the outback as sometimes people have to chase the kangaroos away first so the pilots can land their planes.

On Sunday we visited the gallery at the Western Plains Cultural Centre, it was small but the exhibition on show had lots of different animals, I loved the Polar Bear it was so life-like I thought it was real when I first saw it. In the afternoon we went to the skatepark to let off some steam before we went to the Dubbo Observatory that evening to do some stargazing. At the observatory, we looked at the moon, Saturn, Jupiter and we seen a Nebula which was pink in colour and looked amazing, my dad gave Peter from the Observatory his camera and we got a photo of the nebula that you can see below. Did you know the moon has cracks in it, they are craters and it looks like cheese through the telescope? The stars looked so bright that some of them hurt your eyes when looking at them, we saw a range of stars called the butterfly. It was such a cool thing to do and we were really lucky as the clouds disappeared halfway through and it was really clear which meant we could see everything very easily. Saturn was my favourite thing to look at as we could see the rings around it so clearly.

Tamworth was our next stop, our friend Scotty who is looking after Ruby was born there, the town is famous for Country Music and has a Country Music Festival in January every year. We visited the Big Golden Guitar Museum, which has wax models of famous country music singers such as Slim Dusty and Troy Cassar-Daly. It also has a huge collection of guitars signed by famous country singers and gives you the history of country music in Australia.

we got our picture taken beside the Big Golden Guitar so you'll see how big it really is.

Tamworth is such a great place for kids like me as it has an amazing play park in the town centre and the best skate park I have seen yet. Have a look below to see what I mean.

We went for a drive to Barraba to see some more Silo Artwork, these silos are privately owned by Simon and Amanda Koopman, they were painted by Fintan Magee and took only 19 days to complete. The silos are 3 pictures of a local water diviner searching for water using wooden sticks. Many people today don't believe this works to find water but I know it does as that's how dad's friend Gerry found the water on his property and I got to see how divining works for myself just a few weeks ago.

We booked to do a tour of Nundle Woollen Mill, the owner Nick showed us how the wool is spun from the bale of wool, he gets back after its been through the cleaning process, it's called greasy wool when it's sheared from the sheep. Nundle is the only remaining woollen mill that does the whole process from bale to bobbin to beanie. This means they take the bale of raw clean wool and spin it until it becomes a bobbin of wool, this bobbin can then be used to make beanies etc for sale or sold as balls of wool to people who knit for themselves. It's all done using the same old machines from years ago that have been repaired and still work today it was so good to see.