We awoke to a very cool morning and shorts were replaced with long pants.
After breakfast we departed with the group being given three different options for the trip to Parkes. The only requirement was that we needed to be in Parkes and ready to depart for a bus trip by 3:30pm We decided to follow the most direct route which took us through Narromine and then Peak Hill.
We probably experienced our worst fuel consumption ever with most of the trip being driven into either a head wind or a cross wind at about 45 degrees. The trip was uneventful until we rejoined the Newell Highway when much to our surprise, we were passed by a wide load (4.6 metres). At the time we were passed, we were travelling at about 95kph so we can only wonder what speed the wide load was travelling at. We took photographs as the wide load passed the motor home directly in front of us. We are sure that the transport authority would be interested in looking at the photograph but unfortunately the trailers number plate was unreadable (wonder why?). The irony of the stupidity was that we all got caught by roadwork. The driver of the wide load gained zilch for his utter stupidity.
We were the first to arrive at Parkes as we planned to have early showers. We were all ready by 3:30pm when a bus arrived to take us to visit a local museum. At this time we learnt that one of the couple had broken down at Peak Hill and were waiting for assistance. The problem they had has occurred in the past but had never been replicated when their vehicle was serviced. They now had a situation where they could not change beyond third gear.
We visited the Parkes Museum which is also the sites for Kings Castle, a museum of original Elvis Presley memorabilia. The Parkes Museum houses a wonderful display of old and ancient farming machinery with many of the items still operating. We actually had a private visit and were fortunate to several pieces of machinery started. It was amazing to see the old machinery work with some of the items sounding so sweet it was not funny. The Elvis Presley collection contains original and replica items. The exhibition is small but definitely worth a look if you are an Elvis fan.
After concluding our museum visit, we were collect by the bus and taken into Parkes to a local hotel for our farewell dinner. Our friends with the disabled motor home were able to organize a ride to Parkes and joined us late for the dinner. We returned to our motor home at 9:00pm and headed to bed of what was a cool evening.