Penrith – Goulburn

Got an early start as the spot we’d chosen to sleep in was busy most of the night. But its good to get an early start for a change. Kept to the back roads as much as possible. Encountered a few people up our arse in the morning and we took even more quieter road. Enjoyed the smaller towns that we passed. It was really pretty and quite nice to drive through all these little spots.

Stopped in Mittagong for coffee and walked around and checked out the antique shops while Steve enjoyed his annual haircut.

Enjoyed the next few towns of Bowral and Berrima and found the Berkelouw Book Barn and picked up a book from their Rare Book department. It’s a book by Richard Wright. The first black writer in America to make it in the mainstream market. He started writing in the 30s and had a few books published through the communist party. It was about the only place that he could get his education as well as enjoy rigorous debate and discussion on many topics. From this he got a job through the governments new writers program that they created after the depression and he was offered a book of the month slot if he cut his book in two. He did and it went on to sell over 500,000 copies. We’ve been listening to his show on the radio. He was born in 1908 so on his 100th anniversary of his birth his books are being re-released. I managed to find an old one called Native Son, published in Australia by Angus & Robertson in 1940. I’m looking forward to reading it!

We eventually rejoined the Hume Highway and followed it into Goulburn where we decided to spend the night. They have a great cinema in town as its only $7 each for the movies – all the time – we decided we needed to support it and took in the very sad Marley & Me. Decided it was time for our 135,000km service and we can get it done on Saturday so we’ll enjoy a few quiet days in Goulburn, Australia’s First Inland City.

We'll its good to see we have a recession on... Nice to see people can't afford to waste money on cars anymore...

We actually drove past this ute (driving really slowly so it didnt get any stone chips in its perfect paint job a few days later) and realised it was here for the Ute & Dog Muster being held of course, on Australia Day. We couldnt stay for it, as we will always want WA to win this one... But looked like a crowd was building up for this one...

We've also noticed on our travels that most towns in NSW have alcohol free zones around their CBD area. Most now have signs, similar to parking type signs that say that you are now entering an alcohol free zone from 1/7/07 to 30/6/10 or somthing similar. We are not sure what the reason is, but Steve thinks he's found a way around it...