From: Orange
To: Bathurst
Distance: 51km
Clouds and light showers greeted us this morning so it was a slow start to the day. We eventually left about 11 o’clock and drove eastwards to Macquarie Woods recreation area, a beautiful location right in between Orange and Bathurst. We camped here back in January this year as one of our first trips away with Tassie. Our stop was scheduled especially for Tassie, as we felt guilty that she hadn’t enjoyed Orange quite as much as we did (too many dogs around).
As soon as we pulled up beside the small lake, Tassie immediately jumped out of the car and confidently began exploring the long grass. It was brilliant to see her so happy.
We stopped there a couple of hours as the showers got heavier and Tassie did a bit of exploring.
Around 3pm we headed off to Bathurst. We had planned to pull up our caravan in our friends’ driveway, but on our arrival found the trees a little low, and pulling in would require some extensive trimming. We said hello to David and Tamara and explained our predicament. They invited us to stay in their self contained apartment below their living area.
Tassie loved having lots of space to run around in, and once she had spent some time sniffing around was very settled and loved the company of Felix and Rory, David and Tamara’s young boys – in fact that was the most comfortable around children I have ever seen Tassie.
We had a great evening of roast beef and pork on the BBQ accompanied by salad and a delicious pumpkin pasta. We shared a couple of our fine wines from Adelaide Hills and Barossa, and decided to stay another night given we are just 215km from home.
All this wine tasting had worked up an appetite and a very timely text from friend Karen gave us a list of recommendations. We decided to call into Agrestic Grocer. It turned out to be right next door to the Badlands Brewery, the beer Mr A had enjoyed at The Oxley Wine Bar in Cowra, and they offered a tasting paddle from the bar.
After lunch we picked up some vegetables for tonight (Woolworths ‘the fresh food people’ this time) – again disappointed by the poor quality of fresh produce available – bendy carrots, soft runner beans, under ripe strawberries and nectarines – not what we expected at all.
Thankfully once you are in the Canobolas Caravan Park the aspect brightens up…a little. We decide to only pay for one night and see what we think.
We strolled, admiring the views and marvelling at how comfortable the 33 degree day felt amongst all this green and water.
We decided to enjoy lunch in the café at the gardens (sadly not Japanese food – the only menu nod to the inspiration was a miso soup!).
After all this learning, we thought it should be time to go and try some local wine. We headed to a winery on our way back to Cowra, but sadly the cellar door was only open at the weekend. Such a shame. Hopefully the Orange wineries will be more welcoming over the next few days…yes, I know, another wine region in our future!
…And so to our final evening in Cowra. We again enjoyed the company of Keira and Glenn for a few beverages while our Weber cooked up our butterflied pork. We shared a few stories along the way, Mr A lamenting that I will never let him have a chain saw. Our close friends will know why…and so do Glenn and Kiera now.
All packed and ready to go – or so we thought – until I try to level the van – the air suspension had sprung a leak again. Not thinking it was Saturday I called the service line at Zone and immediately got a perky voice on the line asking how they could help. Now that is super service for a manufacturer to provide weekend service cover as well. Warms your heart it does.
The hosts Keira and Glenn were so helpful and welcoming, nothing too much trouble for them. Now why can’t every park be like this? A real cracker.
We then went on to the POW camp itself. Not much was left to see, the info boards again though told a harrowing story of several thousand POWs crammed in to the camp, with the last prisoners not being repatriated until 1954!
We jumped on our bikes for an explore. Forbes is pretty flat, and there is a cycleway around the lake. We rode out to the information centre to see what other rides were nearby – other than the lake path they couldn’t really tell us of anywhere else. We collected some brochures about the surrounding regions and continued on our way. We spotted many water birds and a young brown snake which crossed our path – there has been a lot of rain in these parts lately, so there are plenty of frogs, which means numerous snakes. The shared pathway circumnavigating the lake was flooded in many locations.
We called into Bernardi’s supermarket – a trendy ‘Harris Farm Market’ style store (our Sydney friends will be familiar with) with great choice and reasonable prices. We hadn’t eaten lunch so it was a bit of a battle getting Mr A to walk past all the goodies he wanted to buy – somehow we managed to depart only with fruit and vegetables, no fruit cakes, pastries or giant hams!
The Hay Plain drive was a lot more scenic than we remembered, or perhaps we’re getting more attuned to the subtle variations in the Australian landscape. We stopped for a couple of quick breaks, and by mid afternoon we are pulling up at our camp for the night at the Weethalle Showgrounds – home to the country club (a tennis court, bowling green and a makeshift golf course) and three or four horses. 
This is Tassie’s expression after spotting the horses – she’s such a city slicker:
We called the caretaker and she came to open up the power box and the toilets, all for $10! She was so welcoming, and after walking around the small settlement of Weethalle, indicative of the friendliness of this isolated little place, and typical of what we have experienced in all these country towns (since leaving the tourist spots in the Kimberley!).
Clearly times are tough here, boarded up shops and run down property, but looking in the window of the local café (The Road Kill Grillz!), there is lots of effort being made to organise community activities.
The river is an ever changing environment with flood and drought adjusting the river’s path all the time. The tree roots from the towering red gums were like incredible sculptures along the rivers edge, their solid ground long gone.
We returned to camp and cleaned up our things, dried the boats and took Princess Tassie out for another walk. She feels very adventurous here and is absolutely fascinated by the river.
A home cooked meal completed the day, eaten outside in the warm evening – it stays light until way past 9pm these days. We had a chat with some friends, making plans for Christmas. As much as we are enjoying our travels, we are quite excited about catching up with our Sydney ‘family’ again. Being apart has made us appreciate them all the more.
Tomorrow we hit the road again, heading off to adventures new. I wonder what the next camp will bring…?
Let me explain in my defence, I had been wondering, in idle movements (of which there had been a few), if I could get my bike on the packraft, thereby opening up more route possibilities. I’m not convinced yet.
We were immediately immersed in the forest, towering river red gums dominated the landscape. Small flocks of parrots scattered as we rode through this magnificent scenery. We were heading into Yanga National Park to see a historic woolshed, and had a short bit of deserted tarmac to ride down on the way.
We explored the woolshed buildings which operated until 2005 and are now a museum. These buildings hosted a number of B&S balls in their time (bachelor and spinster parties), and employed numerous locals involved in shearing the 5,000 sheep here three weeks each year.
I was particularly intrigued by the explanation of how Balranold was at the heart of such an extensive river transport network reaching right across the southern part of Australia. Apparently 5,300km of navigable river was utilised when the water was up.
Now the rivers are so quiet, in four days camped by the Murray we saw three tinnies and a houseboat.
We arrived back at camp to find Miss Tasmania enjoying the sun and ready for another sniff around the campsite. She had a big walk this morning with Catherine again. It just makes me smile every day to see how willing she is to explore the bushier camps like this one.
I’m loving a book by a Dutch historian Rutger Brekman, who we had heard on a podcast and both really enjoyed. He has collected together a bunch of research on social experiments that were tried in the US, Canada and the UK to see what would happen if we just gave money to the poor (with no strings attached) rather than set up an elaborate system of welfare with all the costs that go with overseeing and managing that bureaucracy. It’s fascinating and counter intuitive in some ways. All of the initiatives paid for themselves because when given money, and left to their own devices, the “poor” didn’t just quit work and spend it on booze and gambling, as many on the political right would think, but instead mostly carried on working, but changed jobs to follow their passion, spent more time with their kids, and generally made better decisions about their lives. Their health improved, their children’s educational success increased, crime went down, these social experiments showed incredible ROI.
Now…we are in the middle of the Riverina, one of the great wine producing regions of Australia. But apparently “the locals” don’t bother with wine much. Interestingly though, out of the four tables having dinner in the restaurant tonight, three were drinking wine. So don’t they really want a choice of good wine? Or is it that someone can’t be bothered to offer it?
Before long, Mr A’s bike was ready to collect. Sadly the bike shop owner told us a familiar tale – cycling here has really dropped back, and he doesn’t know how much longer he can sustain the business. So disappointing. Something needs to change to make people adopt this more sustainable transport method. Mildura is ideal for cycling – it has little gradient and some investment in bike lanes – but clearly not enough to shift the culture of getting in the car.