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Published: October 7th 2008
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Two week trip to central NSW. From to Sydney to Geurie (20 km south of Dubbo) to visit friends . Stopped off half way at Kelso Pub (Just at beginning of Bathurst ) for a nice break and lunch.
Spent a week with friends at their "resort" home called Possum Ridge. Guerie is a cute town with great houses and cottages, all with those beautiful wide verandahs wrapped around the properties. We climbed Bald Hill in 15 mins or so and enjoyed an amazing view from the top. Many people in Geurie grow their own produce and had chickens, etc. You don;t want to be driving in to Wellington or Dubbo every time you need something so preparing a shopping list is vital.
Dubbo has all the usual stores but they are enormous. A few malls are full of people but the main town street is much nicer. There is a fantastic winery which we visited called the lazy River just 2 kms out of town on the Old Dubbo Road. Great food and wine but even better scenery from the dining room.
The Dubbo Zoo is the best in the world (my opinion anyway). We spent all
day.Also visited Wellington (though not the caves) and the Parkes Radio Telescope (The Dish) on a day trip.
Then off to Hill End, the old Gold Rush town of 1860's and 70's (the rush only lasted a few years at most before the miners moved away, 1872 was the heyday year). Your first indication of the massive quest for gold is indicated on the road leading in to the town, all along the sides the earth has been blasted and dug and routed and so it looks like the surface of the moon (if the moon were a rich red colour)...with long ridges of red soil. Beautiful colours of soil and clay everywhere. In 1872 the population was 8000 and there were 5 banks. a brewery, 27 pubs, and 2 newspapers etc. Now the population is 80. We stayed in a cute Hill End B and B on the main drag called Hosies and our rooms (adjoining) were dated from the times of the gold rush. Having breakfast in the dining room was like stepping back in time. As was walking around the town which has been well preserved. If not, there are signs all over the place showing
photographs of the buildings of the past. We visited all the old stores and then Carigmoor which is a house that has not changed it's interior or furnishings since the time of the gold rush, which was fascinating. If a little ghostly.
After walking the route up a nearby hill we went for dinner at the pub where a band from Tamworth was playing country music. Interesting to hear some Pat Cash songs live. In the morning we walked the Bald Hill Mine track and along the way we stopped off at a river and I found a rock with a few specks of powdery gold. Very exciting, even if it does turn out to be pyrite, "fool's gold". Then visited the Kissing Point Lookout for a picnic where you can see out for miles over the Turon River Valley.
Drove on the Hill End road out of Hill End and the scenery gets more spectacular. Sofala next to see the site of Russel Drysdale's famous paintings. The town doesn't seem to have changed much at all since the Cricketers or Sofala was painted. In fact I would guess the same old galahs were sitting outside the pub
drinking Tooheys on the day we visited! The town is a classic Australian outback town with the main focus being a pub but Sofala also has great restaurants and cafes etc. The museums are interesting too. We stayed in a place called "Riverside Cottage", part of the Ryder Homestead where we could have had an astronomy night with the owners telescope but it was cloudy, and behind us was a river which our host called "platypus River" because a group of platypus live there. We looked but could not see any but the river was spectacular regardless. The best part of the whole visit was when a kangaroo came down the opposite bank and hopped right towards us through the water before veering off after spotting us. Quite awe-inspiring, Lauren and I were speechless. Even better is I caught it all on video, it is the 4th video on this blog entry. Kangaroos are everywhere around Hill End and Sofala as they are not culled like they are around Dubbo.
Home via Mudgee to buy some home made jams, market gifts and natural soaps. Again, beautiful scenery but no time to visit the wineries this trip.
Stopped off at
Katoomba to visit family (T) and have a warming coffee at a tea house and buy some crystals and rocks from the great mining shop on the main drag where we learned where to go panning next time (Not Hill End apparently which has been over mined and panned).
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