the castle, moree and armidale

16 January 2006 8:30am-ish

In an unusual turn of events for me, i haven't found time to write in days. so much amazing stuff has happened. i'll try to write this in chronological order.

lets start with kings plains castle. it really was a real castle. liz and i spent 24 hours feeling like we'd walked into a Pride and Prejudice manor house, complete with everything we could ask for in an evening of indulgence. Bathtubs with feet. Private balconies. A full cake of soap each. People serving you food and wine and port. Magnificent grounds (Liz and I took over 400 photos in less than 24 hours...) I'm finding it hard to gush enough about how awesome it was. Well, the one draw-back for liz was that she creeped herself out thinking the place was haunted, but i slept better than i have in many months. Check out the website

http://www.kingsplainscastle.gleninnes.biz/kpchtml/accom.html

One of the cool things about our stay were the people who were also staying there. There were 8 guests in total (the other 6 were couples from Moree, Lennox Heads and Tamworth). We got lots of great tips for places to stay and things to do, and they were just great company. liz and i have been really enjoying the fact that in 6 days we've only spoken to one person our age - the bartender at the Grafton Crown Hotel. Seems like not a lot of tourists our age come out this way.

My favourite part of the castle was the woman who ran it. colleen was lovely, although she did ask me whether salmon and bacon were appropriate options for a vegetarian (which amused me greatly, and has now turned into one of our most prevalent location jokes. mmmn, bacon...)

Ok, enough gushing about the castle.

One of the cool tips we got was about the Moree hot springs. We left the castle Sat morning and drove towards Moree (stopping every 500m to pick more wild flowers or take photos - it was a LONG trip). Actually we took a detour to Gwydir olives and went a bit nuts there. we drove into Moree with no idea where we could stay, and were horrified. i think we really turned into princesses, but we refused to pay $55 to stay in a filthy, tiny, smelly pub full of drunken yobbos, no air con, and no vegetarian food ("we can do you a salad").

It felt like something had died in there. we drove from place to place searching for something decent (by the way, if you're coming to Moree, don't be fooled by the name - Moree Health Resort and Hot Springs was nothing but a concrete jungle of boxy units with no windows. there was no grass, no plants - nothing would live there. always a good sign to get back in the car and drive away as fast as possible.)

Eventually we found an awesome place - a caravan park on the outskirts of town with its own hot springs pools (at one point we had them to ourselves for half an hour, which suited our cravings for luxury. check out the photo of Liz luxuriating). We stayed in an airconditioned cabin with stove, fridge, tv, microwave etc with a room each for $31 each. that's my kind of budget accommodation. if you're interested in moree hot springs, it was called Gwydir Carapark and Thermal Pools.

After leaving Moree (and driving back through a terrifying ghost town, aptly named Gravesend - i found myself seriously speeding to get out of there) we drove about 3.5 hours to armidale to stay with Jerb and Simone, who both have 3 or 4 days off work to hang out with us.

i'm chilling with a cup of tea on their little front deck, watching a cow eat grass, and enjoying the breeze, the sound of birds, the wind rustling through the trees, and NOTHING ELSE! We're in the middle of nowhere, and it's just beautiful. I'm not even scared of the snakes and spiders here. i shared my room with a big huntsman last night, and still slept really well. Ok, so the spider and i made a deal that she would stay on the top half of the room, and i would stay on the bottom, and we'd both be fine, but still i shared my room with a spider and wasn't even scared (mum and dad, aren't you proud? your little girl is growing up). that was actually a big achievement for me. i've chilled out so much in a week it's scary.

ok, i'm going a bit out of chronological order now, because i saved the best for last - the space age toilet we found in moree. to get in, you press a button and the door slides open. then you press another button inside to close the door, and soothing piano music starts ("what the world needs now is love sweet love"). to get paper, you press a button and it measures out a piece for you. the toilet flushes automatically when you wash your hands - which you do my placing your hands under 3 special sensors (soap water and air - the soap one sounds like really bad diarrhoea, it's great!). the music stops when you press the button to open the door, then the toilet self cleans. my favourite bit of all was the fact that, to avoid loiterers, if you're there over 10 minutes, the door opens automatically and an alarm sounds. bad luck if you're really constipated but how cool is that?