On your marks...

After a lovely (albeit wet) week alongside the Murrumbidgee River, we packed up and drove North East to Bathurst.

Macquarie Woods Campground

We have the GPS set to bus (to allow for our length) and we have the ‘allow gravel roads’ box ticked. However, we were still surprised when we found ourselves going along a little farm road and the GPS tried to get us to turn up a road that we could hardly see. It obviously hadn’t been travelled upon in a very long time because the grass growing along the centre was higher than our caravan! So after going down a few wrong turns and having to back up our rather long rig, we finally made it to Vittoria.

Macquarie Woods is a beautiful campground behind a pine forest about half way between Orange and Bathurst. It has limited facilities but is a big, open, grassed area on rolling hills with beautiful views.



The famous mountain sign

The main reason we were at Bathurst was so Dan could give the new car a spin around the track. We were thinking of taking the caravan too until we remembered how steep it is. Mount Panorama is the home of the Bathurst 12 Hour motor race, held every February, and the Bathurst 1000 motor race, held every October. The track is just over 6 km long is technically a street circuit, as the circuit is a public road when no racing events are being run, however there is a strict 60 kph speed limit and the police are often there catching the wannabe Peter Brocks. We were really surprised to see there are many residences which can only be accessed from the circuit. You wouldn’t want to be trying to get out of your driveway on race day!

We had a great time going around the track, first with me in the car, then with me taking some excellent photos from outside. We then headed back into town to have a look around when I realised that I didn’t have a SD card in my camera. My old camera told me if I had forgotten to put the card back after transferring photo to my laptop, but not my new one. So all of the great photos I had just taken were lost! Dan was devastated so we went and got a new card and did it all again!

Bathurst is a lovely old town. Being the first inland settlement in Australia and the sight of the first gold discovery, it is full of Australian history. Bathurst has a historic city centre with many buildings remaining from the gold rush period of the mid to late 1800s. We spent an afternoon driving around looking at all of the beautiful old houses, schools, churches and other buildings.

On our way back to camp the weather turned bad. It started to rain and the wind really picked up. We hadn’t tied our awning down before we left because it had been a beautiful sunny morning. We also hadn’t planned on spending so much time in town. As we approached the campground it was blowing a gale and we prepared ourselves to face lots of damage to our awning.  However when we arrived there we were greeted by our neighbours who told us they had brought our awning in for us! As ours is completely different from theirs, they had to round up a few other blokes from the campground to try to figure out how to bring it in.

That is one of the things I love about travelling this country. Nearly every other traveller on the road is exceptionally friendly and willing to help each other out. It gives you a really nice feeling. Sometimes it can get a bit lonely on the road especially when you are travelling to some of the more remote areas, but knowing that there are thousands of other travellers out there in the same situation and who are willing to help each other, gives you are real sense of community.

 

 

 

Early morning fog rolling over the hills

 

 

After leaving Macquarie Woods we stopped at the Japanese Gardens in Cowra.