The Road Home

Driving out of Katoomba in a thick fog of course you give the undertaking to yourself that ' this is so beautiful I'm coming back'. Maybe, maybe not.First stop Govatt's Leap at Blackheath.


A view unchanged since it so impressed Charles Darwin in 1836

As we completed the decent out of the mountains we reached the historic staging post of Hartley's Shanrock Inn.
Then on to Carcoar a small but substantial town on the Bathurst Plains

We continued on the Great Western Road first completed all the way to Bathurst two years after Blaxland,Lawson and Wentwoth found the a way through the mountains in May 1813.
Arrived in Bathurst and just had to go to Mt.Panorama racing circuit. What else is there in this town?

To my amazement the track is open as it's a public road.The V8 Super Cars go around in two minutes. We took seven. They reach 300kph, we got to 60kph. they are mad. We are sane.

Then on to Cowra, turn left and the Olympic Highway.I had not been on that road since 1969 when Peter Newman and I, in a fit of adolescent irresponsibility,decided in the beer garden at The Nottinghill Pub ( Monash Uni watering hole) to drive to the Bathurst 500 car race for the weekend. Twenty-two hours of driving and exams on the Monday morning we completed the trip, arriving back in Melbourne at 7am Monday morning. We didn't excel in our exams. Couldn't help but think of Pete as I drove. He died three years ago.

Next was Young. One of those impressive inland towns built on the wealth of the land with grand public buildings and a rich history. Just outside the town are the Lambing Flat Chinese Tribute Garden. A memorial to the 1861 riots when a mob of about 3000 drove the 1500 Chinese out of Lambing Flat goldfields. The mob then attacked the police camp resulting in 280 army and navy reinforcements being rushed rom Sydney to resore order. They remained for over a year to reinstate the Chinese onto what became segregated diggings. Sadly Australia's racial attitudes go a long way back.

A night in Wagga and then on to our last stop a small town, Jindara, just outside Albury.William Ferguson, the Collector of Customs on the Victorian border settled  with his family not far from here in a town called Talgarno.The were removed from their land when the Hume Weir was built and the town permantly flooded .At Jindara a wonderful Pioneer Museum was established in 1967 by a cousin of ours, Catherine Clark and others. We went to se it.

This museum is a gem. It is the story of the pioneers depicted in a simple and unpretentious exhibition of their lives and all that they possessed.Nothing is locked behind glass with suspicious guards hovering over you. It is staffed by ageing National Trust  volunteers who are interested in both their work and their visitors.I recommend all I know to make the effort to see this wonderful place.

Then we drove to Melbourne and reality, but richer for what we'd seen and learned.

Jenolan Caves and Norman Lindsay

I knew a little about the caves from one of my first books, " The Book of Knowledge" which I owned in primary school. I wasn't that interested. But yesterday that changed. They are remarkable in their size, remoteness and construction. Driving there it still seems amazing that they were even found in the dense, dark and distant bush.First discovered by a farmer looking for a marauding convict in the 1860's they have been enchanting people ever since.Yesterday was my turn,

The Great Arch looking out  from the Devils Coach House



Lots and lots of these to see



Norman and Rose Lindsay's house 'Springwood'




One of many garden sculptures



Somewhere to stay at Jenolan Caves


The Norman Lindsay Gallery was a great suprise. I knew of his work as a cartooist on the Bulletin magazine but had no idea of the breadth of his creativity in so many mediums. He worked in oils, watercolours,etchings ,pencil, book illustrating, novels,sculpture and model ship building.His best known book 'The Magic Pudding' has never been out of print and his  battle with the 'wowsers' of last century to stop his paintings of the female nude, long won. His output was prolific and died at ninety still drawing in Springwood Hospital. The house and garden that are now the Gallery and Museum are a futher testament  to his vision, industry and creativity

A glorious garden

The Blue Mountains

The Blue Mountains
 I can't believe I've never been here before. I've been to Sydney so many times and never made the trip up here.It is truly awesome using that word for it's real meaning. Beautiful, lush, huge and belittling to us mere homo sapiens. It's been here for ever and will long outlast all of us.This month celebrates the 200th  anniversary of the  crossing of this long considered impenetrable mountain range that so threatened the penal colony's very survival. Had it not been for the heroics of sheep farmer Blaxton, Officer Lawson and a young William Wentworth we may all be speaking French or Portuguese as starvation was threatening the continuation of the garrison at Sydney Cove. When they arrived at what is now known as Mt. Blaxland and survey "30 years of grazing land beyond" Australia had really arrived. Little did they know that their three week trek would open the 'Australia Felix' revealing the staggering wealth on which to build a nation.


                                                          One Sister (the other two were busy!)

The Cascades



View from the Everglades Garden

When I'm 64

There is so much to learn about the past. Nobody under 60 would know about the Prisioner of War camp at Cowra,NSW where Japanese,Korean,Chinese, Italian and Indonesian prisioners of war were held during WW2.The camp was the scene of an attempted mass breakout in 1944 resulting in the death of 231prisioners and four Australian guards.It was demolished in 1947 but the site remains a reminder of the horrors of WW2 and just how widely the effects of it were felt. For a small remote NSW farming community the arrival of prisioners from such exotic and distant places must have seemed surreal.