Our first house sit in Inverell is now completed, and I’m pleased to say with no breakages or any other disasters.

It was a pleasant 10 days, and it took us again to another part of the country we otherwise would have been unlikely to visit.

We discovered Copeton Dam, which is the dam that supplies Inverell’s water. We were told it holds 2 1/2 times the capacity of Sydney Harbour, which caused a chuckle from both Paul and I. It appears there are many, many bodies of water throughout Australia, and the benchmark to compare them all to is ‘Sydney Harbour’. Sydney Harbour always comes off second best, and is leading us to believe that Sydney Harbour is a very small body of water indeed! One day I may start up another category called, ‘water sources bigger than Sydney Harbour’. I can guarantee it wouldn’t take long for there to be more than a few posts…

But I digress – Copeton Dam covers a huge area and gives the locals from Inverell and surrounding areas a fabulous water body at which to camp and enjoy fishing, water skiing, canoing, boating, swimming and a multitude of other nature/water based activities. It’s a massive area with several different bays and camping areas, and one that will certainly tempt us if and when we’re back in this area.

Other surprises in Inverell – the size and facilities of the town. Compared to WA, which for anyone who is familiar with WA, apart from a small area in the south west, once you leave the coast line there are virtually no real towns apart from mining towns. And mining towns are sparsely located, and with limited facilities. I guess so much of the population in those areas work on a fly in, fly out basis, so they can pick up what they need when they’re in the fly out part of their working cycle.

The east coast is so, so populated, and each town is well serviced with most needs being catered for. We’ve concluded the amount of good sized inland towns and cities can probably be attributed to the amount of accessible water. It’s hard to travel more than 100 kms without crossing another river or seeing a large inland lake. With such an abundance of this natural resource, it’s not hard to see how so many towns have thrived.

We enjoyed Inverell, but we found ourselves a little lost in the large house, and were pleased to get back to the confines of our little van. We missed our little home on wheels.

Our next house sit is for nearly a month and is nearby. However, we’ll have our van with us at the next one. Not sure if we’ll be sleeping in the van, but if not, it’ll still be nice to have our belongings on hand with nothing having been forgotten or left behind.