Bruce took Les to town today as he had an appointment with the optometrist. After that he was going to buy a car, which he had seen yesterday. He had seen 2, and was going to the bank hoping to get a loan of $5,000 so he could buy the dearer one, which was a ute. Unfortunately, the bank wouldn't lend him the money, no doubt due to his age, so he settled for the cheaper one. Les is moving on tomorrow now that he has wheels again.
We have our back seat up and some of our goods and chattels stored there so only 2 can ride in the car. So Bruce drove Les to town and came back for me. We headed out on the road to Manilla, which is about 45 kms north west of Tamworth. We had been there once before, but years ago.
It was quite a sad and depressing place. There were so many empty shops, close to 50%. We parked at one end of town and walked down one side and back the other. The first 5 shops we walked past were empty. However, there were 4 pubs and 2 clubs in town. How they all functioned I don't know! In the small park near where we had parked the car was a little rose garden. The roses were called Fiona's Wish, named after Fiona Coote, the first person to receive a heart transplant in Australia. I think she actually got 2 hearts. She must come from Manilla.
One thing we did see in Manilla, which was out of the ordinary, was a fellow riding a horse into town along the main street.
There is quite a big lake/dam about 20-30 kms from Manilla called Lake Keepit. We decided to drive out to it and have a look. We took the turnoff which we thought would take us there and ended at a cattle gate with a sign saying only authorised personnel could go any further. We couldn't see the Lake from there so headed back to the main road and drove on a bit further to the next turnoff. This took us to a caravan park which had lowered gates. For day visitors it was $10 per car. We didn't want to pay that just to have a look, so we pressed on a bit further to the dam wall, thinking we would probably be able to see it from there. No luck. We ended up at the bottom of the dam wall and couldn't see the Lake at all. We gave up.
We headed back towards Tamworth and stopped at a park on the edge of town to have our lunch, before doing some grocery shopping and then it was back to the caravan park. We started packing a few things away as tomorrow we are off to South West Rocks to thaw out. We have 10 days there and friends of ours, Allyson and Ian, are joining us there for about a week. Looking forward to it.
Bruce is in the process of preparing a chicken curry for dinner. If I keep going with this, he'll have it all done and I won't have to do anything!
Mileage so far: 1,540 kms
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