The scenery was much greener than yesterday, with more farmland.   The road was also pretty good too, and it was great to cruise along.   Since the area was greener, there was a lot more wildlife and we had slow down for Kangaroos a few times early on in the drive.   More wildlife meant more roadkill, which meant more crows on the road.   Generally the crows are very good at getting out the way of cars.  I thought i had narrowly avoided one that flew across my path, but sadly when we arrived at Lake Cargelligo, there was a dead crow stuck in my front bumper.

Lake Cargelligo was quite nice and we took some photos at the boat ramp in town.   After that, we continued along Lachlan valley way to Condoblin for breakfast.   On our way into the town we had a look at Utes in the park, which is art based on old utes.  We were able to drive past them all in our cars to check them out, so we didn’t even need to stop.

After Condoblin we continued along Lachlan Valley way to our next stop of Forbes.   Forbes seemed to be quite a busy town although it was just a quick break.   We continued along the Lachlan Valley way until we reached our lunch stop at Canowindra.   Canowindra had some really nice old buildings in the town.   We refuelled there and had our meeting point at the Blue Jacket Hill lookout.  The lookout was well worth it, there were amazing views of the whole area.  

After lunch we continued to take back roads towards Sydney.  We didn’t go into any of the major towns.   The backroads were great, with lots of sweeping bends and hilly sections.   At Perthville we joined the same road that we took on the 2024 drive, and continued through the backroads towards our final destination at Lake Lyell.   Literally 10km from the end, we reached a section of road that was being totally re-graded requiring a 6km section of unsealed road bed and mud.   Normally these sections are fairly common, but we had managed to avoid them for this entire trip.

At Lake Lyell we said our goodbyes and then headed home our separate ways.  Since Victoria pass is closed, we all had to go through the town of Lithgow.  Some of us went over Darling Causeway and home via the great western highway.  I took Bells Line of road and the back roads through Galston gorge. I had a pretty cruisy trip home, but the owner of the white 280CE was nearly cleaned up by an inattentive SUV driver.   Welcome back to Sydney.

By the time I reached home, I had covered 4,358km for the trip and 692km for the day.   It had been a great trip, and the 450SE proved to be a great car to take on it.

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