NSW Country trip: 6 – 9 September

Sunday, with great weather on our side, we packed up from the Grenfell old railway station campsite, and drove to the Weddin Mountain National Park, to do some hiking. The drive down was just beautiful, with the golden canola, green rolling hills, and the bluest sky you can imagine.

We found the very highly reviewed campsite indeed lovely but completely overrun by day visitors. We found a little spot to set up our van and then went exploring. We did the Bertha Gully track. Bertha was the female member of the Seaton farmer family, who set up their farm in the area – the poorest of poor, but built with all recycled materials. Some pictures of the farm below. The fence (which was kilometres long!) was made with pieces of wire, chicken fence mesh, and whatever was around, just to keep the animals out, the farm was made out of all sort of hammered flat corrugated iron. Another classic example of the extremely harsh life.

Bertha’s Gully walking track was really impressive, though quite rocky and at various points very steep track, ending at the waterhole, where we had our packed lunch, just in time before a group of some 20 people (maybe 14 noisy kids!) moved us along to return! This was the busiest place we had encountered over the past 5 weeks!

We then did the Ben Hall Cave hike, which was a high climb and awarded us a beautiful view. Ben Hall had been a bushranger, who, after committing various robberies with his mates, hid out in the bush, and this cave was one of those hideouts.

We returned to our van, and slowly but surely saw everyone departing until we were the only ones left in the place! So we used up some leftover timber from one of the other sites and built a wonderfully huge fire in the firepit supplied, and put the pot of curry (prepared the day before) on the plate that fitted partially over the fire.

We enjoyed our fire, and the absolute silence (apart from a fast streaming creek that had supplied Jen’s laundry water) and then started counting the stars, ha! We had the best skies, no light pollution, and then: we saw a train of 8 (Elon Musk’s) satellites pass through….! We watched in amazement how this crossed the sky in a matter of minutes. Arno managed to capture these satellites and an amazing view of the stars with the trees in the foreground. Hopefully, after compressing the files, the photo’s will still be clear enough to see all this below.

Monday-Tuesday

Getting ready for a more familiar destination, we set off via Grenfell (petrol, water fill and toilet dump). We took a little detour to see the Blayney wind turbine farm at Carcour lake.

Arrived at Phil & Deb’s in Little Hartley in the afternoon, where we spent a fun few days with them and Phil’s mum Margaret. We went for a beautiful drive to Tarana where we had lunch and enjoyed the scenery and perfect weather.

Wednesday

Didn’t get up early, as it was pouring, and we only had to drive home. We were actually not too sorry to be copping all the water, as the car, van and bikes got a bit of a rinse – everything was so dusty, it was good to get out of the car at home without taking half a sandpit with us on our clothes!

So we are home again, much more informed…. We learned a lot about life in Australia after the settlers arrived, as well as the culture, art and the vegetation. We also came home to spring, as the last winter month was spent (in the van) in NSW outback/country! For now, we will enjoy our home again and tend to our garden.

Click here for a map of our route