Day 1 – Home to Nangar NP

For the last few years we have done a trip each July school holidays with our daughter and her three kiddos with their caravan. This year our 6 year old grandson asked if he could come with us too. We agreed and what an exited little boy we’ve had for the past couple of weeks. The school holidays couldn’t come fast enough!

Katie and the kids decided to stay home for the holidays so it was just the three of us that set off in the morning. Murphy was playing his tricks again and our first stop was just into town to the tyre shop. A bolt that holds a valve clamp on one of our tyres had come off so off to the tyre shop to see if they could fix it. Luckily that only took ten minutes and we were off.

Oh no! More drama! A couple of weeks ago when I was taking the. Motorhome in for its 10,000km service and rego check the Check Engine light came on. After a lot of fluffing about we purchased an OBD Scan tool from the Iveco guru Stavros in Sydney. Once the reader arrived it was back to our usual mechanic to get the problem fixed.

We’d only just left home and driven about 1km this trip and the Check Engine light came on again! Oh no. What now?

After the tyre clamp was fixed we drove around to see our usual mechanic knowing that he was overseas but hopefully the bloke that works for him would be there. No such luck. However we did meet a new mechanic who has his own business and he has taken a lease on part of the workshop now that our mechanic is slowing down to enjoy being semi retired. Travis was able to use our OBD reader to find the fault, do a DPF burn and that cleared the error. What an obliging young fella.

We set off with fingers crossed that the fault was now fixed.

We had one very exited boy sitting in his car seat in the back. He was surrounded by his stuff, drink bottle, pencil case, and his phone loaded with music and games.

We had an uneventful drive to West Wyalong and stopped for a lunch break at McCann Park. This is a large lovely park with a fabulous adventure playground, lots of grass areas, picnic tables and there’s even a maze. While I made toasties for our lunch Victor went off on his scooter to explore the park. He made a friend at the maze and thought it was pretty cool.

Back on the road we headed northwards on the Newell Highway to Forbes. It was a good run to Forbes where we pulled in to get fuel. Fuelled up we continued on towards Eugowra. Oh no! Before we’d even left Forbes that dratted Check Engine light came on again. I called Travis the mechanic back in Griffith and he explained that I would have to use the Scan Tool to scan for the error then clear the error and see how we go. He said we were OK to drive to our camp as it was only 50k away but to do the scan once we got there.

What a gorgeous spot we found on WikiCamps. Terrarra Campgound in Nangar NP is a lovely spot in the middle of the national park. To reach it you turn of The Escort Way onto Dripping Rock Rd (a good gravel road) and travel along until you reach the national park entry. From there it’s another 4.5km along a very good gravel road to reach the campground. The road in the national park is very narrow in places and follows the creek along the bottom of the valley. The road crosses the creek 12 times along the way. Most of the creek crossings are concrete and the water was not very high. You would be able to get there in an ordinary 2WD. As our motorhome has a long overhang it was slow going through the crossings to make sure our rear end didn’t bottom out.

Terrarra Creek campground is a loop road following the creek. There are only 6 sites but there’s room for a few more. There’s no site numbers so you just find yourself a spot. You need to book via the NSW Parks website however there is no camp fee just the $6 booking fee. We found a good grassy spot next to a fire pit and quickly set up camp for the night. I set up the scan tool and ran a scan, when I got the results I called the mechanic and he explained what I had to do to clear the error. All done and hopefully we’ll be right the next day.

The boys got the fire going and Victor planned to cook sausages over the fire for our dinner.

Victor has helped me plan the menu for our trip and one of the meals was sausages with potato gems and corn on the cob so that was our dinner. 6 year old Victor did a great job cooking our sausages and he was quite chuffed with himself that he’d done it.

We ate our dinner outside next to the fire under the very bright stars.

By the time we’d eaten it was time to get ready for bed. Pa packed up outside while I helped Victor shower. He was great understating that when we are free camping the shower is not like at home. First you get wet then turn the tap off. Then you wash your hair and soap up all over. Then you turn the tap back on to wash off. All very quick and uses the least amount of water.

Once we were all in our PJ’s we snuggled into our big bed and watched the movie Bad Guys 2. Victor thinks it’s hilarious and it was obvious that he’d seen it before. We kept being told ‘ oh this a funny bit’!