Country towns of NSW

Over the mighty Murray at Mildura and we are back in NSW..... it feels good, surprisingly!
We camped again on the Murray at Bottle Bend Conservation Park. The river was again, like in Cadell, quite spectacular. We followed the Murray up to the Murrumbidgee, spending several night on it as well. Also beautiful. Previously never really appreciated the significance and focus and lifeblood that these rivers are to these areas. Over the next week we did a bit of a tour of some NSW country towns and the two things that hit me most were 1. how friendly and welcoming the towns were and 2. how reasonably priced, actually cheap, actually often even FREE where you would expect to pay something, everything seemed. I guess we are seeing this relative to WA. Here's the NSW country town tour inventory:

BALRANALD
The amazing and very interesting Yanga National Park. Camped there on the Murrumbidgee (no entry or camping fee cost which itself is astounding) Yanga was originally a huge sheep station for over 150 years years employing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, and at one point being the largest operating property in the southern hemisphere. Only recently has it become a National Park (around 2007) when the last owners left it to NPs for the public. The focal points of the park are the Homestead on Yanga Lake and the Woolshed on the Murrumbidgee. Both are amazing, the homestead particularly so because it is literally frozen in time; it was left to National Parks with absolutely everything in it, nothing removed, all furniture, books, documents, kitchen, pictures, the lot. And incredibly, you just pick up a key (and audio) from the office and wander at leisure from room to room and through the gardens, locking up behind you. What a privilege it was.

The woolshed.

The boys at Yanga Lake (at the homestead) and Ayla at the Murrumbidgee (at the woolshed)

HAY
What a welcoming and friendly town. Firstly council provide a lovely area on the Murrumbidgee River, Sandy Point, a short walk from the centre, for people to stay with self contained vehicles, and then they offer free bicycles from the visitors info centre. We took them up on both of these and had a lovely morning cycling along the river and through town and up to the Old Gaol Museum.

The Gaol Museum opens your eyes to another dark side to Australias history. The gaol has had numerous functions over its lifetime (gaol, POW camp, hospital) but also including NSW child welfares 'maximum security institution for girls' or literally a place of punishment for girls (13-18 years) transported from Parramatta girls home.

Before we headed out of Hay we had an excellent counter lunch (flathead) at the pub for the dirt cheap cost of $10 each.

GRIFFITH
Another council-provided free camp for self contained recreational vehicles on the lake in Willow Park and walking distance from Banna, the main street of town. Why would anyone stay at a caravan park? There was only two other vehicles there. The Aquatic Centre and City Park were the hits for us here, as well as the bakery where I continued my very own apple turnover tour of country NSW.

FORBES (AND PARKES)
Another one. Thanks again council. Right on Forbes Lake and a short walk over the bridge into the centre of town. This one is quite crowded with lots of other vans. One (I) is very inclined to spend lots of money in town when the town is so welcoming and generous to us. Parkes is only 30 odd km distanced from Forbes and we spent the morning at The Dish near Parkes, which, since my last visit has become a great educational as well as entertaining facility. It was also a very nice surprise to coincidently bump into Kai's friend Chris and family out the front. Reminded us we are now very close to home.

Forbes is the home to the Aussie Biscuit factory which is run by the House of No Steps, an enterprise providing business and job opportunities for people with disabilities. We did a tour of this delightful factory with its colourful workers and stocked up on lots of biscuits!

BOWENFELS
Here we are, back in Bowenfels, where we were Day 1, four months ago, with Susan, Stephen and Spike. We have done a full circle. The kids have been talking about Spike for the last 2 days, 'when will we be at Spikes', 'how long now till Spike', and now we are here, enjoying the comforts of a home. The final short leg back down the mountains to Sydney, Wahroonga, a drive we are quite used to, will eventuate a bit later on today and that will wrap up our 4 month journey, and we will have to start adjusting to life back home, with only the memories (and this blog) of the journey remaining. I guess also a fair amount of red dust, we will probably come across that in various parts of the car and van for months, probably years, to come.

If anyone is interested (perhaps planning a similar journey?!), we will be posting a statistics page outlining kms, petrol, $s etc, so stay tuned.......