I think today won the award for having the most enjoyable roads of the trip. It's got tough competition but I really enjoyed going down all the dirt roads in the middle of the countryside. I never realised that this all existed, not really that far away from Sydney. Honestly, I didn't even know there were so many dirt roads - I figured they would be asphalt even out here. But I loved it!
We started the morning surrounded by birdsong, and I spotted a few wallabies camouflaged in the bush. There was also loads of wattle around, those beautiful-smelling yellow balls everywhere! We jumped back in the Land Rover, waved to our Landie friends and bumped our way out of the bush. The next stop was Orange, via some lovely back roads.
We got to Orange and parked the car, then popped into the tourist office for a map - there was a heritage walk around the town that I wanted to do and we had a look at the nice old places. In hindsight, I wish we'd spent less time there and more time at our next spot, but hey, I wasn't to know! We did drop by a supermarket and pick up some lunch though so that was good. We hit the road again, turning off the main road just before we got to Bathurst. Next stop was Hill End.
Hill End is an old gold mining town that started in the goldrush of the 1850's. In those early years, there was a population of approximately 8,000 and a town was built around this population, with churches, pubs, stores and a post office. Now there aren't too many people who live there, but there are several artist residences there. It just so happens that we were invited into one of these to have a look, since the artist staying there saw me taking a photo of the house. It was so special to be able to see inside the house, and see her process - she was a textile artist and was in the process of dying some wool and showed me around the house, including the stove that was tiled by Margaret Olley, the famous Australian artist.
I have been to Hill End before as a kid, and I would definitely go back there - it was beautiful and I would have loved to look around for a whole day. Next time! We got back on the road and drove to Sofala, being mindful of the roos that were about, as the artist (whose name I have forgotten!) warned us that they made the roads quite dangerous at dusk. We stopped at Sofala Camping on the Turon River just before 5, and joined another group of campers, some rogue cows, some ducks and whole lot of kangaroos at the campground.
