Hi SD,
Looking forward to seeing you again.
Just noticed that you are coming across from Mudgee. There are three main options of getting to Tamworth from there. I have recently had sales reps tell me they have been sent all three ways depending on their brand of GPS
but they are quite different roads.
The main (and easiest) route is out of Mudgee along the Castlereagh Hwy through Gulgong and up onto the Golden Hwy for a few km until you turn off to Coolah and on to Gunnedah and Tamworth. This route is all sealed roads, quite flat country and very easy going for a Moke.
The other route is along Ulan Rd out of Mudgee onto the Golden Hwy, then east into Merriwa. From Merriwa, the easy, sealed highway option is into Scone and up the New England Highway into Tamworth. The other more scenic, adventurous route is from Merriwa to Willow Tree (on the NE Hwy) and then up to Tamworth.
The Merriwa/Scone route is fine and is all highway, although there are more hills to negotiate than the western route through Coolah - nothing too serious though. The Merriwa/Willow Tree route however is a different story. It's a nice drive most of the way and is the route we took for the main day of my gathering I based from my place in January. It does however have a couple of sections of dirt, each about 20km long, which doesn't seem like much except that one of these was extremely rough and corrugated last time I went over it a couple of months back. As I said, a nice scenic drive on a quiet back road, particularly as you cross the range, but you will get shaken up and dusty/muddy (probably dusty though the way things are going). Not sure if that's what you want in a loaded Moke after a couple of days hard driving.
Time-wise you will save a liitle going across the dirt, if you can keep the speed up to a reasonable level, but there's really not a lot of difference between the three
Newie
Topic: Over the border we go!!! - The Victorian convoy to Tamworth (Read 3452 times)
