Our drive to Bathurst (250 km) today was a very pleasant one that took us through undulating grazing country, hisitoric towns and through stretches of forest.
We left Canberra in 6C weather and could see a dusting of snow on the Brindabella Ranges in the distance. The road followed the shore of Lake George which was rather full. This 24 km long lake on the Federal Highway fills a shallow depression and is known as an endorheic lake – a lake with no outlet, meaning it doesn’t flow into any ocean or sea. Water enters the lake via rivers, streams, or rain fall, but the only way it leaves is through evaporation or seepage into the ground. Lake George can be dry for extensive periods and fills after sufficient rain.
We stopped in the tiny town of Collector after reading about the local constable who was shot dead by one of the Ben Hall bushranger’s gang in1865. Ben Hall and his gang, had slid past a posse which was out looking for them and held up the publican of one of the four hotels in the town. On their way into town, the gang had fired at a horseman and that gun shot attracted the attention of the town’s constable, the 38-year-old Samuel Nelson, a father of eight, who put on his uniform and went up the street to investigate. He was accompanied by two of his sons. One of the gang, a particularly unsavoury thug named John Dunn, had been left outside to guard the pub. When confronted by the constable he shot him dead with both a shotgun and a pistol. The constable died in the arms of his teenage son. A memorial, known as Nelsons Column, still exits beside the pub.
We passed through Goulburn after buying a sandwhich for our lunch on the road. This is one the earliest inland settlements in New South Wales and the dominant town in the Southern Tablelands. It was a major service centre for the surrounding pastoral land with huge stockyards and a large meat processing plant. It has a vast number of significant historic buildings such as the courthouse and post office. It also has a high security jail in which some of NSW’s most hardened criminals are imprisoned.
From Goulburn, we drove through some rolling hills and undulating country to the town of Crookwell where the tempearture had dropped to 4C, We realised that we had been here before when we saw the small sock factory in the Main Street. On a previousn trip we had been amazed that such a factory would exist in a remote town but we stopped and bought a couple of pairs of fine woolen socks.
There are quite a few historic buildings in this area and we passed a number of cottages that have survived from the colonial era.
The road contnued through interesting country and from the 4C degrees when we left Crookwell, the temperature had risen to a whopping g 7C where it stayed for most of the day. However, the strong wind made it feel as if it was freezing.
After a while, we stopped at the historic village of Tuena where the local cafe was serving coffee. It is a small settlement – not much more than a few houses and a general store – but was once a thriving mining community. Like most old gold towns, if you stand in the main street with your eyes closed, you can imagine the once thousands of people who lived here when it was alive with the excitement and noise of miners all digging and fossicking and hoping to find their fortune.
A gold rush began there in 1851 when a mnister was travelling to Tuena for a christening. He stopped to boil his billy at Limestone Creek, and found a gold nugget under a stone. Hearing of the find, hundreds of miners rushed to the area. The gold rush lasted for just a few years.
Further north, we found the old town of Trunkey Creek. It is a shadow of its fomer self but it is an interesting old gold mining village. The hills around the town are honeycombed with abandoned mine shafts and mullock heaps and together with the crumbling mud huts and brick chimneys that are the only remains of the goldrush age. Gold can still be obtained from the quartz rocks that were left lying around the old mullock heaps. The district was one of the earliest pastoral areas to be established. Some of the early selections were surveyed in the 1820s.
By late afternoon, we had reachedBathurst for our overnight stop – it’s a remarkable and historic city. It is Australia’s oldest inland city that has evolved from a settlement driven by convicts and their military overseers to a hugely successful service centre for the surrounding rich agricultural area and then to a major administrative centre and, most recently, an important regional academic centre with a number of prominent schools and the main campus of Charles Sturt University.
We found the rather grand railway station which has a High Victorian Gothic design with dutch gables topped by finials, bay windows and a cast-iron veranda with multiple pairs of posts. Apparently, it is one of the most impressive railway stations in New South Wales.
Goulburn is where one of Australia’s leading Labor Prime MInisters, Ben Chifley, was born in 1885. At the age of 17, he commenced railway work as a shop boy in Bathurst’s extensive steam shed. Six years later he was a fireman, shovelling coal into the engine’s firebox to maintain an even head of steam to drive the train. He graduated in 1914 as the state’s youngest first-class locomotive driver, and soon became involved in trade union politics. The steam engine that he drove is preserved under cover at the station.
Tonight, we are staying at the Rydges Hotel which is located on the Mount Panorama Circuit on which Australia’s longest motor race is held – the 1000 km Bathurst 1000. Our room looks over Con Rod Straight and across to the pits. On non-race days, the roads around the circuit are public roads and we might just do a lap before we leave tomorrow..
Interesting drive.