central nsw, Holiday, Outback NSW

Outback NSW – Gilgandra

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Let’s start our study of Outback NSW towns with Gilgandra. By definition it is a Central West town (it’s less than 70km north of Dubbo, a genuine Central West NSW town), but since it is on the road to the Outback, we’ll classify it is an outback town for this post.

Being so close to the metropolis of Dubbo (whose population is nearing 45,000) means that Gilgandra is virtually a suburb of Dubbo. It also means that any facilities it once had had been taken away, as it’s just as ‘convenient’ to go down the road an hour (which is the country equivalent of 10 minutes by city standards). It’s left many of its shop-fronts vacant – they’re relics of a by-gone era. On the plus-side, it’s close to facilities, with real estate prices that haven’t yet gone through the roof.

The town was certainly on the sleepy side when we dropped by, but was a pleasant change after the controlled chaos of Dubbo (those roundabouts are worse than Canberra’s – big call, I know, but have you ever shared a roundabout with a road-train?). 

I like the murals that were dotted around the town. They are now a feature of a lot of country towns, I noticed, and I wholly approve. The more art the better, I say! 

central nsw, Holiday

Outback NSW – On the Road

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Today I’m starting a new series of posts about our adventures in the far west of NSW. This post is from our trip in December 2022. It was warm to hot, and the previous month had brought heavy rains to this region. In this post, we were driving up the Castlereagh Highway between Gilgandra and Lightning Ridge. The landscape is very flat, with farm-land on either side. 

You can see some of the fields were still flooded, in other places it was functional enough to let the stock back on. 

We passed through a few sizeable towns – Gilgandra, Coonamble and Walgett. Some had silo art, while others even had an art gallery.

Holiday

Southern Highlands – Joadja – Part 2

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This is the second and final post of this series on my farm stay at Joadja.

The afternoon of the second day was sunny. You can see the difference in the landscape. Everything looks lush and hopeful.

I woke up early on the last morning in order to take advantage of the gentle early morning light. Being a mid-May morning, there was a little mist and a lot of dew. It’s a magical time to be out-and-about.

The sun eventually cleared the horizon, bringing about another clear morning. I think I appreciated the day a bit more knowing what has come before.

Holiday

Southern Highlands – Joadja – Part 1

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My last few posts were about the seaside, but we’re going to gradually make our way deeper in-land for awhile.

In this little series, we’re on a farm-stay in the Southern Highlands region of Joadja. These photos were taken back in May, 2022. The property we stayed at is on the Wingecarribee River, which threads itself through the region. It is a good 30-45 minutes from the nearest town (Berrima), so it’s certainly a place to getaway from it all. The stay took place over 3 days, so I got to know the many moods of the landscape. The weather does change how a place looks quite dramatically. I’m obviously using my photographers/landscape painter’s eye now…

On a sunny afternoon…

On a rainy morning…

There were lots of walks on farm roads to be had. I’ll post more rural scenes from Joadja in my next post.

Holiday

By the Seaside – Gerroa

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We’ll explore the neighbouring village of Gerroa. Historically, Gerroa has been the much smaller sibling to Gerringong, but in the last 10 years, estate developments in between the two towns mean that they’re really now joined at the hip.

Gerroa is located on the north end of Seven Mile Beach – which stretches all the way down to Shoalhaven Heads. It’s another stretch of coast that I’m very familiar with.

It is a collection of beach-side caravan parks and houses that are perched up on Black Head. Black Head itself consists of dark basalt produced by a volcano that was active in the area about 30 million years ago.

Gerroa is perfect if you just like a paddle in the surf or a really long walk along the beach.

Holiday

By the Seaside – Gerringong

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We’ll break up our adventures in-land with a bit of a seaside sojourn to the near South Coast. Gerringong is now a hop-skip-jump from Sydney since the Princes Highway by-passes were completed. It is usually very popular on weekends and in the summer.

Our visit however was on a particularly changeable weekend in winter 2022. We stayed close to the beach, so although the weather wasn’t the best, the first thing I did in the morning was venture out to Werri Beach, where I was greeted with a rainbow (or two). As you can see, I was obviously one of the more enthusiastic visitors that morning.

It’s worth getting up early for the sight of the lovely, stormy beach.

central nsw, Holiday

Taralga and the Southern Tablelands

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We concluded our trip with a visit to the Southern Tablelands directly south of Abercrombie Caves. Lots of gentle landscapes here, west of the Dividing Range. We stayed in the middle of it near the hamlet of Laggan.

We took little drives around the area, visiting the slightly bigger village of Taralga. Taralga was a pretty sleepy place, but it had some nice architecture of varying vintages along its main street.

That’s all for our drive around Central NSW that took place back in December 2021. Almost two years have passed since then, so I’ve got a lot more of NSW to share. I’ll be back next time with another drive around this lovely state.

central nsw, Holiday

Abercrombie Cave

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I haven’t posted about caves in a long time. Probably because I haven’t been to any in about 10 years. We’ll visit a less well-known one in this post – Abercrombie Cave.

Often outshone by the much more extensive Jenolan Caves or Wombeyan Caves, Abercrombie is tucked away in the western side of the Great Dividing Range, off the Bathurst to Crookwell Road. It’s just one cave, really, and a relatively short and straight-forward one, so it’s self-guided – the ranger let’s you in and then walks away! But because it’s so secluded, we got the cave all to ourselves for a whole 30 minutes!

central nsw, Holiday

Milthorpe

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We’re continuing on our tour of NSW country towns. The next town we’re exploring is Milthorpe. It’s located on the other side of Bathurst to Hill End, 240km west of Sydney and 40km south-west of Bathurst. Unlike Hill End, it’s a very accessible town, located mid-way between the large towns of Bathurst and Orange. The land around it is generally flat, which attracted agriculture and grazing. It, like Hill End, is in the country of the Wiradjuri, whose lands extended from Mudgee, all the way across to Hay.

Milthorpe grew prosperous from agriculture and even has a railway station on the Western NSW line, with daily stops by the Dubbo-bound train. It is a busy tourist town of 1,300 people, and gets many visitors on weekends and school holidays. People love the living historical buildings, lovingly maintained. It’s also lucky that it’s now within the Orange wine region.

It might be a touristy town, but unlike towns of similar ilk closer to Sydney, I don’t think it is yet too well-loved.

Adventures on life's merry-go-round