Over to you, John: In good times this is glorious country. Back in the 1990s we used to camp on the banks of the Allyn at Allynbrook, just downstream from Peter Lawrence's property on a dairy farm owned by our friends Lloyd and Judy Grant.

It was idyllic; a good deep swimming hole - over my head - right next to a shallow stock crossing where the cows wandered across for milking each day.

Elizabeth and I had one tent and twins Cait and Tom, then six or seven, had another. Before dawn each day, when she heard the quiet chug of the milking machine starting up, Cait would get up, pull her clothes and gumboots on and wander up over the hill to help Lloyd bring the cows in for milking.

We would spend our days swimming (or floating around), doing a bit of fishing and occasionally catching an eel or a catfish, climb the big hill at the back of the property for commanding views to the Barringtons, or just relax, read or play games.

This is a beautiful country. For obvious reasons we had to cancel our planned trip to the Caucasus (Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan) this year so, in October, Elizabeth and I headed off on what would turn out to be a 7200km road trip around NSW - down to Cobargo, which was devastated by the bushfires, across the Snowy Mountains and up to Harden to see how Bill the Bastard is progressing (Google him), then across the Hay Plain to Balranald, up through Mungo to Pooncarie, then followed the Darling to Menindee and on to Broken Hill, then turned east to Cobar and Dubbo, down to Orange, up to Mount Kaputar and Coonabarabran, Armidale, Dorrigo, Grafton, Evans Head and back down the highway with a stop at South West Rocks to home.

We tried to stay two or three nights in each place and stayed in cottages, cabins, caravan parks, on working farms and the occasional motel. And it was so good to see the country greening again after the drought. I had driven down through the south-west to Mungo National Park at the same time last year, when everything was brown and bare. But this was a wonderful holiday, seeing so much of our ancient and modern history, so much so that we're planning to do a similar trip next year, heading up to the north-west corner of our state then across to the Flinders Ranges and loop around through the Grampians, the Mornington Peninsula and the Victorian high country.

Still with John: We're so fair dinkum about this that we have bought ourselves a car fridge for Christmas, so we can carry our food with us wherever we go or stay. Wonderful invention! A mate lent us his for the last trip and I don't know how we would have coped without it.