Jan 2009

Did a tour of the Goulbourn Brewery. Built by Greenway, famous government architect of early NSW. Its the oldest continuously operating brewery in Australia. Its even older than Cascade in Tassie. Learnt about the Maltster - always a woman, who used to make the malt by hand. Now made by machinery, malt severely affects the taste of the beer and isnt the same as home made malt.

Now being just 1½ hours from Canberra, after getting the van serviced we were on our way. Steve was hoping to kayak around Lake George, about halfway between Goulburn and Canberra. There are three free camp sites along this stretch too which looked good. Unfortunately the lake was now pasture and there were many a cattle grazing this land. I know Canberra has had water restrictions for many years, possibly longer than Melbourne has? So I guess its to be expected that Lake George will be no more…

Having been to Canberra before, last time in the middle of Winter, I asked Steve what his first impression of it is. He said he likes it. Surprised how big it is, loves all the large English trees in the centre of town and that there are lots of tourists and activities going on. Its alive. Which is certainly wasn’t on my last visit here 10 years or so ago. It was dead on Sunday’s and no one was around. We couldn’t believe how many languages we heard spoken whilst walking around the Civic area of Canberra (the main shopping district in the CBD). The main shopping area consists of three street blocks of three storeys tall of arcades, all joined together at the first floor level and above over the roads. Its interesting. I guess during winter its easier to shop this way. But I’ve never seen so many shops in all my life!

We decided to see another movie. We found the cinema in the centre of town that we had tickets for had shut down, so we had to get out to Manuka to the next one. Given our useless GPS didn’t know where Manuka was we managed to find out way there past Parliament House. Manuka is the Subiaco of Canberra. Full of fabulous eating houses and bars and night clubs. We dined at Outback and enjoyed damper with native herb and garlic butter followed by Wallaby with quandong glaze with salad. Yum!

We then went to see the fabulous movie Gran Turino. Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry turns into grumpy old Harry. Its fabulous and Steve said Clint reminds him of my dad! We laughed and laughed through the whole movie. It was just so clever and had some brilliant supporting actors. I cant recommend this move highly enough. Its just great!

Found a parking spot at the top of Black Mountain and the famous Telstra Tower lookout.

Enjoyed a huge wind and rain storm overnight. It cooled us down greatly. Took a drive up to the war memorial up the top of the hill. It was an amazing structure. Looked like an arab wind tower like we saw in Dubai. It looked like a dry stone wall. It was about 3 storeys tall and has a great viewing platform at the top. A local citizen purchased the land and donated it to the memorial group. They started planning the memorial before the end of the first world war.

From all accounts, Goulburn has always been a prosperous town. The quality of the buildings surviving from its founding days are fabulous and quite grand. Goulburn Plains were named by the Governor in 1820 but by 1823 there were still only 2 houses in the town. It appears that Queen Victoria clamed Goulburn a parish in the 1850s which created Goulburn as the first inland city in Australia. Given the protestant/catholic thing that’s been quite strong since Australia’s inception, there appears to be a strong influence by both churches in Goulburn with each church trying to outdo the other. The Durack books indicate the War of The Roses was alive and well in Goulburn. The current book I’m reading, A New History of Australia (edited by Frank Crowley), the English government, still wishing to keep its protestant strong hold on its new colony made sure its religious hierarchies for at least the first 50 years of Australia’s existence excluded the Catholic faith from all decision making in the colony. A few of the original Durack clan are buried in Goulburn.

To take in a few more movies due to the great valued offered in this town, we took the opportunity of seeing Valkyrie which just came out. It was okay. Interesting to learn the story as I wasn’t familiar with it, but forgettable is how Steve describes it.

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...

Got a late start and drove of as soon as it got hot. We drove the back roads as much as we could and we pretty much for the most of the day were driving past coal mine after coal mine and when we couldn’t see a coal mine, we could see a coal fired power station. It was depressing and horrible to see. I was under the impression that the Hunter Valley was the wine growing district, but we didn’t see much wine at all. We certainly didn’t want to stop it was a horrid sight.

How can this ever be called green????

If you look very closely to the left hand bottom corner of the digger you'll see a little dot - that's a ute - puts the shear size of this into perspective. Each mine was at least 1km long and no idea how wide.

The earth is just totally destroyed once they've finished with it.

But so as not to end on a horrible way... we caught these cute cows huddling under the few trees that were on this property. Its really funny. If you look real close you can see a nose and 4 black legs under a bush in the front garden. Some how, one managed to get into their front garden and was eating their lawn!

We kept driving till we reached our destination for the day, but we couldn’t stop as it was still incredibly hot. The sky towards Sydney was black and we were hoping we’d get some rain. We kept on to Penrith and after a few splatters on the windscreen it dropped about 10 degrees – thankfully!

We went to the movies and saw Slumdog Millionaire. What a great movie. I really enjoyed it.

Finally cooler, we headed south.

While Steve was out paddling, I got chatting to the Water guy at the dam. He was telling me about the amount of vandalism done at the park. He told us that the bridge used to be open right the way across to the other side. After one vandalism act resulted in over $500,000 damage, they now have it locked off. It seems that vandals have resulted in most of the park now being fenced off and locked up. Its such a shame.

He did have loads of information about the Tamworth festival. He said the normal beer order for the week is usually 80 kegs a week and during the festival they get through 700 kegs a week! He said its an amazing feat just to get the beer there. He said the coordination involved in getting the beer in, storing it and continuing the supply throughout the 10 days is also a feat. He said Coles and Woolies also get a truck load every few days of juice alone, just for all the campers staying at the huge campsite run in town. He also said that the pharmacies have to have deliveries at midnight, and as they are getting drugs, they have to have police escorts due to the drunks still hanging around the main street during the night. He said its so well coordinated that they some how managed to get all the deliveries from all over the state done during the middle of the night, as it’s the only time the trucks can get in!

Decided after Steve’s paddle, that some bluegrass was on the agenda. Had a great deal of difficulty trying to find some to see. Found some that was basically a jam session. They were all very talented individuals, but had never played together before, and one guitarist hadn’t played bluegrass before today so it was a bit of a shambles. I did enjoy the music with the drums in it, but the fiddle player was fabulous.

We next had heard that a great slide guitarist was due to play at 5pm back at the acoustic lounge, but he didn’t show. We decided we needed to pull the pin and move on out of town. We got 50kms down the road back at the town where the First Fleet Memorial was. We had a good nights’ sleep, once it cooled down in the van…