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Van Trip 2007
Day 67
Kilometres Travelled.......361
We left Gunnedah about 9:20am and headed on to the Kamilaroi Highway, travelling through Curlewis, Breeza and Quirindi to Willow Tree on the New England Highway, and then to Muswellbrook, where we stopped for lunch. We then continued down the highway through Singleton, Scone and Kurri Kurri to the F3 Freeway for the final run home, arriving about 3:00pm.
Curlewis is a rural village, with a population of 603, on the Kamilaroi Highway, 16 kilometres south of Gunnedah . It was founded by Henry Thomas Pike, a sawmiller from Norfolk who later became the Mayor of Gunnedah.
In 1909 the railway station opened as a stop on the Mungindi branch line, but has since closed. Livestock sales commenced in 1919 in Curlewis and were, for many years, held in alternate weeks at Gunnedah and Curlewis until improvements to the Gunnedah saleyards, led to it's closure. The town has a hotel, a public school (with 49 pupils enrolled), a general store, grain silo, police station, sports ground, Rural Fire Service and a Ceramics studio.
Breeza is a small town on the Kamilaroi Highway about 43 kilometres south of Gunnedah in the Liverpool Plains region, with a population of 133.
Quirindi is located on the Main North Railway, 392 kilometres from Sydney. The station opened in 1877, and continues to be served by daily rail services operated by a Countrylink Xplorer train to and from Sydney and Armidale/Moree.
The town is on the Kamilaroi Highway 15 kilometres northwest of its junction with the New England Highway at Willow Tree.
It is known as the Gateway to the North West — being the nearest link to Gunnedah to the West and Tamworth to the North. The local economy is based on agriculture, with broadacre farming dominant on the black soil plains to the west and livestock grazing in the hilly eastern part of the district.
Willow Tree is a small town composed of about 169 people, located in the Liverpool Plains, 14 kilometres south of Quirindi near the junction of the Kamilaroi and New England Highways. The town itself is small but the farms extend southwest out to the township of Warrah. It is a service centre to the rural areas of Warrah and Mount Parry.
It was in the clean paddocks of the Willow Tree area that the first organised game of polo was played in Australia, and Quirindi, 16km up the road, continues to hold an annual polo carnival in early August.
To the west of Willow Tree are the Wallabadah Nature Reserve and Ben Hall's Gap National Park. Here the notorious bushranger, who gave the park its name, would occasionally hide out. Hall's father, an ex-convict also named Benjamin, owned a property at Murrurundi and the young bushranger spent his early years there.
Kilometres Travelled.......361
We left Gunnedah about 9:20am and headed on to the Kamilaroi Highway, travelling through Curlewis, Breeza and Quirindi to Willow Tree on the New England Highway, and then to Muswellbrook, where we stopped for lunch. We then continued down the highway through Singleton, Scone and Kurri Kurri to the F3 Freeway for the final run home, arriving about 3:00pm.
Curlewis is a rural village, with a population of 603, on the Kamilaroi Highway, 16 kilometres south of Gunnedah . It was founded by Henry Thomas Pike, a sawmiller from Norfolk who later became the Mayor of Gunnedah.
In 1909 the railway station opened as a stop on the Mungindi branch line, but has since closed. Livestock sales commenced in 1919 in Curlewis and were, for many years, held in alternate weeks at Gunnedah and Curlewis until improvements to the Gunnedah saleyards, led to it's closure. The town has a hotel, a public school (with 49 pupils enrolled), a general store, grain silo, police station, sports ground, Rural Fire Service and a Ceramics studio.
Breeza is a small town on the Kamilaroi Highway about 43 kilometres south of Gunnedah in the Liverpool Plains region, with a population of 133.
Quirindi is located on the Main North Railway, 392 kilometres from Sydney. The station opened in 1877, and continues to be served by daily rail services operated by a Countrylink Xplorer train to and from Sydney and Armidale/Moree.
The town is on the Kamilaroi Highway 15 kilometres northwest of its junction with the New England Highway at Willow Tree.
It is known as the Gateway to the North West — being the nearest link to Gunnedah to the West and Tamworth to the North. The local economy is based on agriculture, with broadacre farming dominant on the black soil plains to the west and livestock grazing in the hilly eastern part of the district.
Willow Tree is a small town composed of about 169 people, located in the Liverpool Plains, 14 kilometres south of Quirindi near the junction of the Kamilaroi and New England Highways. The town itself is small but the farms extend southwest out to the township of Warrah. It is a service centre to the rural areas of Warrah and Mount Parry.
It was in the clean paddocks of the Willow Tree area that the first organised game of polo was played in Australia, and Quirindi, 16km up the road, continues to hold an annual polo carnival in early August.
To the west of Willow Tree are the Wallabadah Nature Reserve and Ben Hall's Gap National Park. Here the notorious bushranger, who gave the park its name, would occasionally hide out. Hall's father, an ex-convict also named Benjamin, owned a property at Murrurundi and the young bushranger spent his early years there.
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