We hit the road early heading for Tamworth. We knew that the music festival had been and gone in January but figured it would be good to take a look around. 
After his fish dinner last night, Caleb’s brain was super charged and he flew through his schoolwork quickly. He now wants to be fed fish more regularly as he is convinced it was the hated fish (that he had to be forced to eat) that made his brain work better. 
Conveniently, we arrived in the town of Scone, New South Wales right in time for morning tea. Ray declared it necessary to have scones in the town of Scone, so we parked and walked to the nearest coffee shop. We were relieved to see scones on the menu and enjoyed plain and date scones with jam and cream. We passed back through the local park and said “hi” to the statue of Captain John Hunter who the Hunter Valley was named after. This region is another of Australia’s renowned wine areas and we passed many wineries on the way. 
We stopped for lunch at a park on the way into Tamworth, knowing that large towns hold many culinary temptations for us travellers. It didn’t help much though because we ended up at Bunnings buying sausages to aid Tamworths Toy Library. Ray had discovered that the local high school was running a car wash at Bunnings to raise money for the Tamworth Hospital. When we turned up towing our van, there were a few heads shaking but they agreed to wash both the car and van for $20. We didn’t really expect a top notch job (luckily) and we were content that the money was going to charity. I felt sorry for the poor supervising teacher who was doing more work than the kids who looked like they were enjoying their usual Saturday catch up at the shops. 
We realised we needed some cash as we were camping out at the local dam for the night and would probably need to put cash in an envelope. We have been caught out before so didn’t want to get caught again. We toured around the town. Tamworth has a population of 50,000, big enough for 3 Maccas. That was as good a place as any to get a coffee and some cash out. We were also tempted by one of the ice cream cones that Maccas always has on offer. Yummo!
We drove out to our campground, delighted to see that the charge for the night was $5.00 per car! Showers were $1 each if you wanted one. We scored a beautiful view over the Chaffey Dam, a fireplace with free wood and an atmosphere so relaxing and quiet that I kept telling Caleb to speak quieter so that he didn’t disturb the few other campers and the peace and quiet.
We toasted marshmallows on the roasting sticks that had been a parting travel gift from friends at home. We always keep a bag of marshmallows hidden in the cupboard for instances such as these.
We spent the night sitting around the fire, toasting our toes and being thankful for our here and now.