Spring in the Central West

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Spring has finally arrived in the Central West of New South Wales. For the past few weeks, there have only been a few mornings with frost on the car. The days are getting warmer, with highs now reaching above 15°C on a regular basis, even reaching 20° at times. The windows can finally be opened again, and our heating bills will decrease.

The flowers are blooming, the fields have never been greener, the birds are singing, and sandals have been dug out from the back of the closet. I'm ready for the warmer weather!

I do love having four seasons, but I must admit that this past winter in Orange was harder to deal with than a normal Canadian winter. It's as if these Australians are in denial that temperatures could ever dip below 20°C.

Houses and buildings are not properly insulated against the cold. Many older homes do not have heating systems, and rely on one (likely unflued) gas heater (free headaches from the fumes!) to heat just one room. And as if to add to the denial that it ever gets chilly, or heaven forbid, actually cold, people complain that the cost of heating is too high. Although, we have friends here who had a gas bill of $1700 for 3 months. Ouch!! Complaints are allowed at that price!!!
Perhaps originally these homes had fireplaces. I think a double-brick house could be warm with a fireplace in each room, as the bricks would theoretically retain and radiate heat. However, that isn't the case. So in our rented double-brick house, inside temperatures hovered between 10-13°C. While I do think that many North Americans tend to overdo it with their heating in winter, surely no heating is just as ridiculous?

So I'm very happy that the inside temperatures are now above 15° without any heating.

Spring is here, and we're off to explore the Central West and enjoy the sun!

Trips planned this spring: mountain bike race and a visit to the Dish in Parkes, NSW; orienteering with the local GoldSeekers club; a trip to the Japanese Gardens in Cowra; visiting the local wineries during the Wine Week in Orange; a trip to Cairns for our first anniversary; and a trip to Sydney to catch up with Michael Mooney, who's visiting from Canada.

The Dish - Dave entered a mountain bike race held in Parkes, NSW. Although this town was named after Sir Henry Parkes (the "Father of Federation"), it is more well known as the home of the Dish and the annual Elvis festival. The Dish is the CSIRO radio telescope, made famous in the movie of the same name, or for the older generation and space-nerds, made famous by the fact that it was the telescope used to receive the television signals from the 1969 Apollo 11 Moon landing. Celebrating its 50th birthday this year, of course I had to visit it while we were in the area.
Dave's mountain bike race went well too. We camped overnight with some of the 449 other competitors and Bigfoot. The astronomy club was there too, showing interested kids and adults the moon, Saturn and stars through their telescopes (one guy even pointed out the Apollo 11 landing site!).
Dave went went well in his race the next morning.

Local attractions: We've been out orienteering a few times now, with the local Goldseekers club. It's been good fun, although I am quite a bit less in shape than Dave, so next time I might be running solo so I don't slow him down so much. 😊
We also visited the Japanese gardens in Cowra, which were set up to remember the Japanese POW's imprisoned there during WWII. Its beauty and serenity provided me with a great way to recover from the flu I had earlier that week.

Wine Week - Our experience with Wine Week wasn't as grand as we had hoped - I was too busy at work to enjoy any of the weekday activities, and the first weekend we simply forgot until it was too late. So the second weekend we made a point of: visiting the Union Bank to watch Costa's gardening lecture (and made our very own veggie garden the next day), tasting wine at the Night Markets held at Robertson Park on that Friday night, and attempting to do a bit of the "Grazing Trail". Looking at the brochure, we thought the Grazing Trail was a great idea - many local wineries were offering nibbles with a glass of wine for less than $10. We decided the winery in Canowindra offering $10 wood-fired pizzas, followed by the nearby winery offering Italian hazelnut chocolate tortes would be a great way to have lunch on the last Sunday of Wine Week. However, the first winery wasn't doing pizzas that day (not mentioned in the brochure), so plan B was antipasti and cheese at a new winery followed by dessert at another. The problem was, we had a hard time finding that winery! Faisan Wines, near Borenore, was not well sign-posted. In fact, we drove right past the winery up to his neighbour's house! Oops. It was not quite what we expected. It really felt like we were arriving at someone's house, not a winery. While that may be charming for some, it seemed just a bit too informal for us. He was nice enough not to look down on us for not knowing a thing about what makes a good wine, and gave us a little tour of the winery. We stood around the wine barrels nibbling the few pieces of cheese and bread that were offered to us, and tasting the rather large glasses of wine he poured us. We appreciated his kindness but suggested a sign would be an improvement for the next Food or Wine event in Orange. We left rather hungry and decided to go to Borrodell near Lake Canobolas, as they have nice food and a great view. However by the time we got there (3pm) the kitchen had closed, despite the brochure stating they'd be open until 4pm for Wine Week grazing.
So we went back to Orange, picked up some sweet local Small Acres apple cider from IGA and went to our place to have our own antipasti platter.

Enjoy the photos!

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Photos

Fields of Gold
The canola crop is doing very well this spring in the Central West!

Blossoms!
Spring flowers!

The Dish
No trip to Parkes is complete without seeing the Dish!

Japanese Gardens
We enjoyed the newly warm weather by visiting the Japanese Gardens in Cowra, NSW

Wine Week
We decided a winery visit was a great way to celebrate Wine Week in Orange, NSW

Gumnut blossoms
The natives are blooming too!

Soaring high
A view from Mt Canobolas, Orange, NSW