DAY 7
16th December 2020
We left Gunneemooroo in the rain and drove south to Peak Hill. We had been through this little town on our trip in 2017 and I remembered it being really nice. It still was!
It had stopped raining, so we first went to have a look at the open cut gold mine and had a wander around there. It was pretty interesting. The mine was in operation from 1996 to 2005, and before that was just an area covered in random little mines from decades past. It's no longer in operation, hence the trees growing on the sides!
Then we went to the spot that Josh had decided on for camping. I wasn’t really too keen on going to another site without toilets, and wanted to go elsewhere, but Josh said we should just go and have a look so we did. Good thing too, as Bogan Weir turned out to be one of my favourite free campsites in all of Australia! We went around taking photos of the trees in the weir, had a lovely sunset and roasted some potatoes and corn over the fire for dinner.
DAY 8
17th December 2020
We left Bogan Weir around 10am, and went to use the facilities in Peak Hill. I had a look around too, taking a couple of photos of the lovely old buildings.
We drove around the Goobang National Park to stop at a little town called Cumnock. Took a few photos there, then we followed the Animals on Bikes trail through Molong (also very pretty).
There were 2 churches near Bathurst that I wanted to visit, so we took a bit of a detour to go to them. Byng church was the first one, located in a little valley. It was so pretty, with an old cemetery. You couldn’t go in though, which was sad. We had lunch there. We then drove over to the other church, a St John’s Anglican Church at Georges Plains. This was in a little town but the church itself was really quirky. The location wasn’t great, there was a railway track nearby, but the church itself was lovely.
We turned off the main roads at the Bridle Track. Josh had wanted to do this track in 2017 but it had been closed. It was open this time so we took the opportunity to go. The asphalt road to the track itself was so steep, then we got onto the dirt road. It wasn’t too bad at all, just bumpy. There were several campsites along the track, and we drove to the end of the track - the track didn’t stop, but it had fallen into the river and there was no way around. We camped at Black Gate campground.