To be honest, it wasn’t the chance to be in an open Agatha Christie ‘museum’ that excited me the most about staying at the Hydro, it was actually the chance to see the Megalong Valley views at all times of the day.
The chance to live through a few days with that view was really worth the effort.
That’s the end of our short stay at Medlow Bath. I’ll be back with another series about another town in New South Wales.
Awhile ago, we spent a luxurious anniversary weekend at the Hydro Majestic in Medlow Bath, in the Upper Blue Mountains. The Hydro is a heritage hotel with a very illustrious history, and walking in felt like walking on to the set of Downton Abbey/Agatha Christie. To a Sydney-sider who has driven west on the Great Western Highway numerous times over the years, it felt like the hotel had been in renovation forever (well, it did take decades to complete). Well, it’s finished now.
But more than being on a live film set, I was more interested in seeing the awesome views of the Megalong Valley. It did not disappoint.
More views in the next post.
The highlight of the walk for me was the carvings on the sandstone platforms. The Royal National Park is in Dharawal country. This country stretches from the southern shores of Botany Bay, west to Campbelltown, and as far south as the Shoalhaven River in Nowra.
The Dharawal are saltwater people, and the carvings of their food sources – mostly sea-creatures – illustrates that. This is an education site, teaching the young men about hunting.
Elsewhere on the walk I encountered more fabulously weathered sandstone, a real highlight on any walk in the Sydney Basin coastline.
We’ve come to the end of our little Bundeena retreat. Next time, I’ll start off on new series somewhere in New South Wales.
Many people choose to stay in Bundeena due to its proximity to the Royal National Park. It is Australia’s oldest national park and the 2nd oldest national park in the world after Yellowstone National Park in USA. It has many, many walks, but I was interested in the easier, shorter walks that are accessible from Bundeena. So I tried the Jibbon Head Loop track.
After walking out of the southern reaches of the village, the walk started on a track across the sandy heath. Here, only hardy sand-loving plants such as banksias and tea-tree shrubs seem to grow. There were also signs of the many bushfires that have run through this part of the national park.
It wasn’t long before I sighted the water, with distant views of the Sydney city skyline.
Up river from Bundeena village, Port Hacking narrows into mangroves. Here, visitors love to launch kayaks and paddle upstream, sometime all the way into the national park. The mangroves provide a quieter, though no less scenic, view of the waterways.
The village is on the shores of Port Hacking, where the Hacking River meets the sea. There was of course a strong marine theme to the entire town.
In May 2024, I spent a lovely week retreating in the village of Bundeena. Bundeena is a village that’s uniquely placed – it is surrounded by the Royal National Park, and yet it’s just across the Hacking River from the suburban expanse of Cronulla and the Sutherland Shire.
The week was spent having dips at its beaches, and walking the National Park and around the village. I was almost completely on my own, and yet since I was in the village, I wasn’t alone really. I had nice little chats with locals every day.
I think I’ll start the series with beach views. Bundeena is blessed with quite a few. They’re not ocean beaches, hence not spectacular or expansive. I like them because they have a cosy feeling about them and are rarely crowded. And staying in the village meant that they were always just a short walk away.
Our last stretch towards home on our Winter 2023 adventure involved driving down the stretch from Narrandera to the Hume Highway. This involved driving on the many quiet country roads that made up the Canola Trail. This is a triangle between the towns of Temora, Coolamon and Junee where the crop canola is grown (to be made into oil).
The crop blooms at the end of winter, and fields suddenly go from lush green to fluoro yellow! Who knew that your humble deep fry oil had such picturesque beginnings?
At the end of the trail was the cute little town of Junee. It had an assortment of well-kept historical buildings from various eras. It is also just off the Hume Highway, meaning, the next stop was definitely home.
And that’s the end of our Winter 2023 journey out west. If you’re new to the blog, check out my previous posts about this journey out west. I have more adventures to post about, so stay tuned. Hint, we’re not heading west this time!
The last pit stop we made on our way back to Sydney on our Winter 2023 trip was at the small, Riverina town of Narrandera. It’s 550km from Sydney and 440km from Mungo (i.e. Almost right in the middle). It’s got a population of some 4,000 people, and seems to like its sport a lot, having numerous and well-kept facilities for a town its size.
But the life-blood of the town and the region is the mighty Murrumbidgee River that runs through the town and irrigates the fields for miles around.
Being that we visited in ‘Sprinter’, we saw some wonderful flowering gums in bloom.
My goodness, 2025 has just flown by. So, it’s all good time to try and finish posting about the winter 2023 journey, documenting our way home to Sydney from Mungo, in the south-western corner of NSW.
First, we had to escape the ‘Plains’. It took us much of the morning to get to nearest town, of Balranald, through mostly unsealed roads. But, on the other hand, there’s something mesmerising in seeing such flatness, laid out until infinity.
Static and Silence 