No, this wasn’t named for New England in the US. Both the US and Australia have a common connection to England so both have named a part of their country New England. Australia assigns names to their highways and designated the highway that runs through the area the New England Highway. It took the better part of a day to drive from Lightning Ridge to Tamworth which was our starting point for touring the New England Highway. It was a distance of 400 km but the road was rough and we had to drive slower than normal.

The drive from Lightning Ridge was interesting in several ways. The first thing we saw as we turned east toward Tamworth was cotton fields. These were huge cotton fields that went on for 100 kilometers of travel. The land was so flat that you could see mirages from the heat rising from the dirt. The fields were barren as we traveled, being fall it was between planting seasons. Near the end of the drive we found some places where there were crops in the field. Clearly, cotton was king in this part of the country. We also noticed a lot of standing water. This we think had come from the storms that we saw on our way to Lightning Ridge. In any case, they had recently received a good rain shower. We even saw water standing on the road in one location. As we traveled east, a mountain range appeared on the horizon. As we got closer we could see more definition. The New England Highway runs through the Great Dividing Range and we were going to be in the mountains for this part of our trip. The final route into Tamworth wasn’t as extreme as it looked, the highway turned and took us through a gap in the mountains with little mountain travel. We were thankful for that. We checked in at the Top Tourist Park in Tamworth and settled in for a nights rest. Morning would bring another adventure.