Day 2 started with a cool morning, 13 degrees C but dry and hinting of hotter times. I left Uralla at 8am and continued North passed Armidale and on to Glen Innes still on the New England Highway.
On the way I passed through Guyra who were competing with Tamworth for a festival, this time something much more interesting: it was the town’s annual Lamb and Potato festival! A great combination and I am tempted to come up next year to sample the fare.
At Glen Innes, I stumbled across a little gem of a cafe, the Cuisine Cafe, great food and coffee! The food always tastes better in the country when it hasn’t travelled too far.
After a good break, I headed back onto the highway, still the A15 and headed for my next stop near Tenterfield. This town has two claims to fame:
- The flamboyant entertainer Peter Allen was born and raised here. Allen was well known on Broadway and as being a husband of Liza Minelli.
- The town is also known as the birthplace of a nation, as this is where Henry Parkes made a speech about the need for the early States to combine into what is now Australia.
Just up the road from Tenterfield is Wallangarra on the border with Queensland. The station here is an oddity because when the railways were built in Queensland and New South Wales they used different gauges i.e. The tracks are a different width, so at Wallangarra each side of the station has a different track.
So different in fact that the sides are built differently, with Queensland on the right of the photo and the more ornate New South Wales on the left!
After this stop, I was in Queensland and an hour behind due to the clocks changing and I had a good run up to Warwick where I refuelled. By this stage the temperature was now in the low 40s.
With only 160 kms to go to my destination of Brisbane, I put my head down and enjoyed the ride through Cunningham Gap and on to Ipswich before joining the freeway into the city.
Another great day – really every day on the bike is great, and tomorrow I have a technical day riding South again with a lot of twists and turns.
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