Old and the new

At Stockton today we found some rusting old hulks that were exposed by the low tide. These sorrowful looking remains were in close proximity to some new vessels and some oyster leases. they could be the remains of service vessels for the oyster leases. beside them on  the shore, was the remains of an old slip way, including this hand winch, some rusting railway lines that went back into the water and this lovely stone wall....The winch area capped off by an abandoned plastic chair.

Every Picture tells a Story

Gulgong the town on the $10- note

Gulgong used to be on the old paper $10- note along with a profile of Henry Lawson. Lawsons mum  was born there and Henry was born in Grenfell, but spent a great deal of his childhood in and around this lovely town of historic 1850's buildings and the narrow streets to match.

"The night too quickly passes
and we are growing old.
So let us raise our glasses
And toast the days of gold."
So starts one of my favourite Lawson poems. Can you guess the title?

We press on to nearby Mudgee for a few days. the plan at this stage is to use Mudgee as a base and go out each day and explore the old gold areas around here. This has been on our "To Do List" for a number of years. A Ross Dainton painting that we still have, was titled "Hill End" and that is the first stop out of the Hill End /Sofala historic sites area. Glorious day today with temps about 25C on our arrival, we dropped the van at the caravan park on the river and moved straight into town. Info had it there was a market on run by the local Lions club. Off we go, before lunch and the market was quite good with about 50-60 stalls. I got sucked in by a woman selling her own lemon butter and a passionfruit butter YUMMO....

Hay, Hillston and the Rabbit Trap Hotel

After a short stay in Bendigo, yeah, that's right, bendigo. We had been up the central coast of new south wales just after Easter when i had to head back for a check up in Bendigo. Well, after getting the all-clear, I couldn't wait to get going again. We caught up with the kids and headed up the Cobb highway hoping that the MYSTERY town of Hay would hold the appeal that it has had for us for several years. We have wanted to explore more of this old, riverina town with classic architecture since visiting on one of our "paddlesteamer wreck finding tours" of years ago. That was when we found the wreck of the PS Viola downstream of Hay, went on then to Maude, the junction of two great rivers, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee. Anyway, Hay had been labelled as the NEW inland capital of Australia, before Walter Burley Griffin developed his theory as Canberras site. Why? Simply, Hay is equidistant between Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide..Q.E.D....
This explains why the main lenders of the day, The Bank of New South Wales (Westpac), The Great Union Bank, later English Scottish and Australian Bank and even later ANZ Banking group, The Hay council and the magnificent Hay Railway station, are such splendid if not grandiose buildings.

After exploring Hay, firstly from the Hay showgrounds, which is a cheap but convenient overnighter, and secondly from the hay caravan Park (The Top Tourist park) we found that Hay had not developed to our previous expectations but still does a great job for the surrounding community with all services well covered.

Hillston was our next goal and we had been told at the Hay showgrounds of a small caravan park over the lachlan river and just past the Lake Cargelligo intersection. This place, Billabourie, was a family farm set up with a few powered sites. Off we go...

10 kilometres of gravel road off the main road and we see the park logo, a Hart-Parr tractor(vintage) hitched up to a nice old plywood caravan at the front gate meant that we had found the right place.The drive in had seen several different things from this low lying river type landscape. we have seen this country before from the family farm at Balranald where the cattle seemed to grow fat on nothing much down by the river amongst the trees. This time, Black Angus and a few herefords were seen on the way and then a field of harvested cotton bales waiting to be loaded and taken off to the gin at Hillston or somewhere else North. We had already come past paddocks where sowing of grain was happening even so by dry sowing. Crops of citrus trees and neils trucks from Moama laden with potatoes..

Three nights was not enough here. Jeff and Steph, from Adelaide had left us although Robert and Janet and Barry and Trish, all from Ballarat were staying on until after we left they kept up the wood supply and Barry caught good Yellas every session he went out. My score was not as good with one, but it was a beauty.

We have changed our tack again, now, instead of heading North into Queensland, we have the time to go back, across to the coast and complete our original goal of doing the East coast. Heading back over the Lachlan we follow it for ages. Lake Cargelligo, Condobolin and beyond before it swings back towards Orange/Cowra and the hills of the Great Dividing range. Camps 7 has the Rabbit Trap Hotel as a cheap site with power and water so that's our next destination. The hotel is at a small place called Albert, population 11, made famous this year by Jason Owen, runner up in X factor last season.

There is a car rally due in town today so we decide to head off and get outta their way. Heading up through Narromine, Dubbo and on to Dunnedo we have time to walk the 600 mtrs up the main street for a look and say g'day to a few surprised locals. I have felt a lot more comfortable the last few days because I'm back in HAT country and people don't stare at me when entering shops or anywhere at the moment..

The Long Paddock

We have been wanting to do this for a while. The Long Paddock is a section of New South Wales that has a great deal of history associated with it and this time it's because of the droving industry.The long paddock comes from times when there was no feed at home for the graziers to feed their stock so, they hit the road, or the long paddock. In this part of New South Wales, it was part of the National stock route which, basically lead from the Gulf of Carpentaria, to the Southern Port of Melbourne.Take notice when you drive out of Moama, heading North and see where the fence boundaries are, you will see they are up to a kilometre apart on either side of the cobb highway. Founder of Echuca, Henry Hopwood, had a boiling down works on the river bank, just out of Moama, at about where  merool caravan park is today and that is the southern  end of the Long paddock. Hopwoods works, abattoir, took advantage of the herds coming through that would normally be swum across the river, to the point of him building a punt that would ferry them across, and, at a price of course.The place where Hopwood chose for his ferry site was downstream of where a fellow Tasmanian convict, James Maiden, had the earliest punt at about the front gate of Maidens Inn caravan park today. Enterprising chap, Hopwood. His punt location meant TWO river crossings, Murray and Campaspe and he charged to cross BOTH.
The Long Paddock leads to the Kidman Way, another famous Australian grazing name, You may recognize that as belonging to Nicole, but Sidney Kidman was her ancestor and he marched his cattle from the Gulf through Queensland and New South Wales to Victoria. Sir Sidney was once the owner of Murray Downs station at Swan Hill. Kidman was known as the Cattle King and there is a book of that name worth reading.
Our visit last year to Camooweal and the tourist attraction there, "The Drovers Camp" was a real eye opener. The research about this industry and the effect and importance

it had on the country is fascinating and so it is worthwhile visiting that complex if in the area.

"Cheryl' the tent lady

On arrival at El Lago caravan park, we noticed a small green tent in the next row of the park. Some time later a single lady came wandering past and went to the tent. That night, it poured rain. I am not sure how much rain we had but it was at least 25mm. there were puddles in the grassy areas around the park and "Cheryl" was in her tent. A polite "good morming" was about all the conservation we had with her but amongst us vanners, "Cheryl" was the topic of conversation more than once. Elaine had said that the boys, John and Rob, had helped her put up the tent two days earlier and she arrived with tent, blow up mattress and sleeping bag all stuffed in a shopping trolley and had come from Sydney where she had been sleeping "rough.""Cheryl" had no refrigeration
 or cooking facilities. We don't know how or where she ate. She hated Sydney so she told the boys.Anyway after the rain, a small white car arrived one morning, "Cheryl" had packed up her goods and they were all placed in the car and she left. More conservation this time more about the "thank goodness, someone has taken her into care" type ones. All agreed that this was good.
We said our goodbyes to John Elaine Rob and Lorraine on the Friday morning and guess what happened Friday afternoon, "Cheryl" returned with shopping trolley, new larger tent and goods. She had a bit of trouble putting the new larger tent up and knocked on our door for some help. Of course I will.....and she was back.

Central Coast of New South Wales

Having lived in nsw for the last 17 years or so, we still know very little about it. Lets face it, it's our oldest state and with our love of all things historic, we need to find more. We chose to stay at Gerroas Seven Mile Beach caravan park for Easter. South coast is a place that we visited about 35 years ago and we haven't been able to get back in that time. Seven mile beach lives up to its name and there is plenty of WOW factor.The park is divided into two distinctly different sides, beachside, where we stayed, and riverside, on the other side of the verybusy road. A visit to riverside showed many of the sites were annual or long term residents, several canvas cabanas backing on to the river and sites suitable for large tent groups, like school groups and the like. Some large groups of teenagers were spotted when we were out, on a surf school/camp. This type of business fits in well along this coast and the beauty of seven mile is that there are no killer currents or high rough surf.
At beachside there were nice modern beach hut style cabins, modern amenities and a pool with different sections that suited from toddlers to adults. The lounge had a few coin operated games , a pool table and a big screen. Outside the lounge a bbq, sink and a pizza oven. First one we've seen in a park. The jumping pillow was just along from us and it had a fair workout over Easter. Lots of tents in ourarea as well and they took up ALL of their site. Annexes, tarps and gazebos were what looked like "compulsory". The park was full as expected over the peak Easter period. Shopping centre is at nearby Kiama and the traffic there was also bedlam. We did a littleshopping at a lovely little IGA at Kiama downs, just out of town away from the traffic snarls. Back to camp and into "lockdown" mode for the next few days. About 25ml of rain overnight and it was quite heavy, next couple of days, just lovely. Drive to Nowra via Shoalhaven Heads gave usa good look around. We were last here when our good friends the Gibsons lived here and we had a holidat at Ulladulla. We met up again with the Gibsons and had a lovely meal in Kiama at Hanoi on Manning and a great catch up. We hope to meet them on the road somewhere.
We moved on from Gerroa back up the highway1 to the Hume and on to Richmond. It was in the new Camps 7 and is attached to the Richmond club. Wanderest has powered sites and water for 12- per night for clubmembers. Showers and toilets there as well and all sites are on bitumen. This area was part of the earliest settlement after Sydney cove began expanding. The Hawkesbury river valley provided fertile soils for farming and vegetable growing in the area.St.Matthews at Windsor has some very early graves in its graveyard beside the church. We found a first fleeter married a 2nd fleeter and their descendants in there as well.