NSW – VIC Country trip: 19 & 20 March

Thursday

Today was the original start date of our trip, and we were going to head straight to Little Hartley where we had planned to spend some 9 days looking after friends’ property, dogs, neighbour’s sheep (ha!), while they were going on a trip. 

As we mentioned in the first post, we decided to leave earlier, and take the long way there…  So, today we went, as scheduled, to Little Hartley, where we will now spend only a few days with our friends as thanks to the Corona virus, they had to cancel their trip, and won’t need us 😊.  However, they are good friends, the weather forecast is fantastic, their property lovely and in the most beautiful spot of the Blue Mountains, so we intend to camp there anyway and hang with them.

We left Gulgong and headed for Hill End, a lovely little historic town, again still in the Goldfields. Perfect weather for a hike, so we did the enjoyable Bald Hill Mine walk, which still has some old mines, stamper batteries and other bits and pieces leftover from the gold mining.  

It was not as lush as the Goulburn River National Park and Gulgong surrounds; we’re assuming they did not have the same amount of rain recently.  There were plenty of kangaroos on the greener parts of the hill.

We had a bit of a look around the town, and then headed out via Sofala, another little gold mining town, to Little Hartley

Given the glorious temperature, we enjoyed Phil and Deb’s beautiful veranda, and took in the peaceful scenery, with the clearest of skies. Love this place and we consider ourselves very lucky to be spending some time here.

As Jen wrote above, it was another clear sky and here in Little Hartley we are at an even darker spot (less light pollution) than in Gulgong. So time to set up the camera again and take a few shots of the Milky Way. Here is one of those I am very happy with.

Friday

After a warm autumn night (15°C!) here in the Blue Mountains, was today’s weather again just amazing… apparently a heatwave in Sydney (36°C), which really is only a few hours away. So much for autumn 😊

Phil and Deb showed us a few lovely lookouts around the area, starting with the Hassans Wall, which has stunning views of the lush green Hartley Valley.

We then took a drive nearby along some of the bush so hard hit during the recent fires. Sad, though good to see some of nature is recovering.

Various roads are still closed, first due to the mess the fires made, followed by the flash flooding sweeping away bridges…!

We stopped at Barden’s Lookout on the way to the ‘Obelisk’.

Barden Lookout gave us a wonderful panorama, and we could even see our ‘campsite’ 😉. Amazing how the recent rain has turned this valley into sweeping green hills dotted with dams filled to the top.

The Obelisk at Mount York Lookout, unfortunately, was not reachable, as the road is cordoned off – considered still too unsafe and blocked with trees fallen during the fires.

Another pleasant day where we count our blessings, enjoy each day as we have it – as you can see, with Arno helping with grass cutting….

We spent the evening looking at the stars testing our new firepit, indulging in one of Phil & Deb’s superb bottles of 2000 red wine… and resolved all the world’s problems….