Day 4

Wednesday 17th June
The workmen building Bingara’s new pool were our alarm clock as they were about 50m away from our back door! We checked out the newly installed jetty on the river across the road, as did a number of curious locals. Apparently it only appeared a day ago and a few of them were looking forward to a new fishing base. One local told us, that as a child, he could remember playing under the roots of this amazing tree.
Bingara is a village of about 1500 people and is one of the few places in Australia where diamonds have been found so is part of the Fossickers Way. The site of the Myall Creek Massacre is in the area, a very sad blot on our history.
 There are a number of Art Deco buildings including the very attractive Roxy Theatre. They are even looking for someone to run the Retro Cafe if anyone is interested. 


Michael found a statue which stirred him to reprise his MM outing in Singapore...what a pity he didn’t have his outfit with him! Singapore friends will understand this reference.
After stocking up our alcohol supplies and purchasing a shovel suitable for moving hot coals, we crossed through Killarney Gap before pulling in to the Sawn Rocks picnic area for a walk and lunch. After another ‘fridge door’ episode (luckily no mess this time) I repurposed the broom as a door prop. Fingers crossed.
Sawn  Rocks are a 40 metre high towering wall of pentagonal basalt pipes, the sheered off remains of a basalt lava flow from the Nandewar Volcano which dominated the area 21 million years ago.
It is an unusual phenomenon which is the result of the slow and even cooling of molten rock which enabled individual crystals within the rock to align perfectly with each other.While this type of five-sided (pentagonal) ‘organ piping’ is not rare to lava flows, it is exceptionally rare to find them so perfectly formed and preserved and Sawn Rocks is recognised as being one of the best examples of columnar jointing in Australia.


Over our picnic lunch we were entertained by a vividly coloured family of variegated Fairy-wrens ( known as purple-backed fairly wrens on this side of the divide I believe) and a flock of the cutest double-barred finches. 
The last leg for today was on to the Pilliga Pottery. The last 10kms were on a dirt road and although the first 5 were Ok I could see Michael tensing up over the last 5. Once we arrived and he realised everything was intact he was able to put his new fire making gear to work and relax beside the campfire, beer in hand. I am also pleased to report that the broomstick fridge wedge seems to have done the trick.

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