4th July to 9th July 2012 Mudgee

Day 01 - 04/07/12- Enfield to Mudgee  261 km

Today was the first day of our holiday, but officially it didn’t start until around 1pm, as first we delivered Meals on Wheels. Since we only had a short distance to drive, we figured it was just as easy for us to do our MoW run than not, and save them having to find someone to fill in for us for the extra week.

After delivering the meals, it was back home to pack the car (couldn’t pack it before because then the meals wouldn’t have fitted!), have an early lunch, and then we could head off.

Of course we can’t travel for a whole 261km without stopping for a break, so we stopped at the Tea House at Hartley. It is one of those places we have passed many times (on our way to and from Parkes), and often said “one of these days we’ll have to stop there”. So this time we did, and it was lovely – Joy’s first cappuccino for the holiday!

We arrived in Mudgee at around 5pm, and checked out our home for the next five nights. It is a pleasant cottage, with 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, and a well-equipped kitchen. The lounge room has a slow-combustion stove – just what is needed to keep us warm in the cold Mudgee winter. The lady who runs the cottage, and lives next door, told us it was -4C this morning – brrrr! She also told us it was an unusually cold morning (yeah, right).

A quick trip to Woolies for supplies, then it was back to the cottage to settle in for the night. Joy has a cold, so will be happy to crawl into a nice warm (electric blanket) bed.

Day 02 - 05/07/12- Mudgee  0 km (in our car)

We woke to a beautiful blue sky and a crisp frost. It might be cold, but it is lovely! If this is what a Mudgee winter is like, then we can cope quite well.

 Sitting on the front verandah of the cottage reading a magazine in the sun – bliss (we are staying in Bliss Cottage). The fellow who runs the cottage (and lives next door, with the lady who runs the cottage J) came over for a chat. Very friendly. But he went on his way when our tour guide for the day arrived.

A friend of a friend lives in Mudgee, and he very kindly offered to show us around and tell us all about the place. Graham collected us at 9:30am, and we drove around the town, looking at the various areas, looking at where would be nice and where to avoid when looking at houses. We saw the new development areas, and also the older, more established areas. There are some parts of town that were housing commission areas, but you can easily pick them.

Because we aren’t really doing the touristy thing in Mudgee, we only visited 2 wineries – Wild Oats and Huntington Estate. Only Joy was tasting, but still bought 7 bottles of wine – that should last for the holiday?

Not only did Graham show us around Mudgee, but his wife generously fed us lunch. We got back to his place around 2pm. Graham and his wife Kaye, plus 3 dogs, one cat, 4 chickens and 2 roosters, and several geese live about 15km out of Mudgee on the Hill End road, on 60 acres of land. Their house is halfway up a hill and has beautiful views across the valley to the hills in the distance. We sat at the dinner table having lunch and admiring the view, and having a good old chat, about this, that, and the other.

At about 7pm, we decided it was time to head back to our cottage. No dinner for us tonight after the long lunch we had!

Day 03 - 06/07/12- Mudgee  ?? km

We woke to another beautiful blue sky and crisp frost. No complaints from us.

Again, we sat on the verandah in the sun, chatting to the fellow from next door, who had arrived to deliver us more firewood. But again, he went on his way when our next Mudgee local arrived.

We had arranged with a man who was principal of Parkes Primary School in the early 1980’s, and had been Joy’s father’s boss for those years, to visit and tell us his views on Mudgee. He was born and bred in Mudgee, and only left to go teaching, then came back pretty much as soon as he could. So he knows a lot about the place.

Kevin is also very interested in the history of Mudgee and the area, and is a bush poet. He has published 6 books of poetry, and had some of his poems put to music and performed by various musicians around the traps.

We had a great morning with him, chatting about Mudgee, what things are here to satisfy our interests, and what to watch out for. Les found he and Kevin know a few of the same people – Les knows them through his father, who was also a bush poet, and played in a bush band. It is a small world.

After lunch, we did drive-bys (not the Sydney type, with guns, but the Bannister type, looking at houses). These were of houses that we thought looked interesting but we hadn’t organised to look through. It also gave us a chance to get to know bits of Mudgee.

A quiet night in front of the fire, watching TV, and another home-cooked meal. One of the reasons we love staying in self-contained accommodation is we don’t have to eat out all the time, but can if we want to.

Day 04 - 07/07/12- Mudgee  ?? km

Still not sick of the blue sky and crisp frost.

Today is Saturday, so the tourists are in town. We don’t want to think of ourselves as tourists.

Today has been pretty much set aside for inspecting properties for sale. Since we are staying only a 5 minute walk from the main street, and the tourists make it hard to find a parking spot there, we walked up to the first real estate agent. She showed us 3 quite different properties. One was a quite old place that was in the process of being done up. All the basics had been done, and done very nicely, but there was still a bit of work needed (fences, shedding, heating, patching gaps between ceiling and cornices etc, etc). It was a house with character, but probably a bit too much work to do for us. The others were newer places, both of which we would probably happily live in, but neither of which really grabbed us.

After lunch, it was off to see more properties. Again, we saw 3, but one of them was way out of our price range, and wouldn’t suit us anyway, as it had a swimming pool. The other 2, however, were quite good. One has really gotten our attention, and we will need to put serious thought into it. The other one is a definite maybe too. But first we need to look at a couple more properties in Mudgee on Monday, then the ones in Bathurst next week.

Back home for afternoon tea, with Joy finally getting some reading done, and Les catching the V8 motor racing on TV.

A walk along the river just before sunset meant we felt justified having dessert for the second night in a row.

Day 05 - 08/07/12- Mudgee – Wollar – Ulan – Gulgong – Mudgee  165 km

The first time we didn’t have a blue sky to wake up to – this morning there was a fog. This meant is wasn’t quite as cold, and it soon burnt off to a mostly sunny day.

Today was our first touristy day, and first we drove out to the Munghorn Gap Nature Reserve. There is a rock formation there we would like to see, called Castle Rock (or something like that), but the walk is about an hour (not sure if this is return or one way), and since we are both suffering from colds, we thought it best not to try that. So our first stop was at the picnic area nearby for morning tea. We just sat at the picnic table listening to and watching the birds. There were heaps of little wrens, yellow robins, and various non-descript LBBs (Little Brown Birds), and their chirping was a really pretty sound. The kookaburras were a bit noisy, but that’s OK.

Our exercise for the day was when we walked to a place called Hands on Rock – 600m walking to get there! As the name implies, it is an aboriginal art site – mostly hand stencils, but also some stencils of emu tracks. There were some grass trees along the walk, so Joy was happy.

 Along the road towards Ulan and then from Ulan to Gulgong, you really get to see the impact of the mines in the area. We are both really conflicted when thinking about the mines. They do make a mess of the land and they look awful. And even though the mining companies do a much better job of rehabilitating the land after they are finished mining, what sort of environmental impact do they have? But we humans also need energy. And I know we have “green” alternatives such as solar and wind, etc, until it can be made financially attractive to use those options, we still rely on coal – hence we need the mines.

Lunch at Gulgong at one of the pubs – a very nice meal, we both thought.

 Then back to Mudgee via the Henry Lawson Drive. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting ready to leave tomorrow, catching up on the diary, relaxing, listening to the birds on the back verandah.

A light tea tonight after the pub lunch filled us up so much that we didn’t even have anything to eat with afternoon tea!

Day 06 - 09/07/12- Mudgee – Sofala – Bathurst  132 km

Yet another sunny day dawned. If this is winter in Mudgee, we’ll be fine. But somehow I think we’ve been seeing it at its best. There is rain predicted for the next few days, just when we head off to Bathurst, so we will be seeing Bathurst at its worst?

First up this morning were more property inspections. One was an old house, which we like, but it needed quite a lot of work done on it, which we don’t like. It had also been advertised as a 3 bedroom house, BUT, the 3^rd bedroom would really be better called a closet, as the single bed that was in there only just fitted.

The other 2 properties we ruled out for a few different reasons – not enough yard, issues with rights of way, weird internal layout etc, etc.

So now it is off to Bathurst to see how it would suit us. We drove there via Sofala, where we stopped for lunch beside the Turon River. At some point in the not so distant past, the river has had a flood, as the trees were definitely affected.

We wandered through the town, and it is quite pretty. There are some buildings that need some real TLC, but it looks like they are working on that, and that the townspeople have some pride in the town.

 We arrived at our accommodation in Bathurst at around 2:20pm – plenty of time to unpack, do the grocery shopping (Woolies is just across the road), and wander up to the main part of town to say hello to our friend Lisa who lives and works in Bathurst, and check out the signs in the windows of the real estate agents.

The place we are staying in is a 2 storey terrace, so we are getting our exercise walking up and down the stairs. It has been quite well renovated, but it still has that old house smell, and Joy doesn’t like it. Once you’ve been inside for a little bit you don’t smell it anymore, but it’s just when you walk into certain rooms, or come back in from outside.

Dinner in front of the (gas) fireplace, watching TV and browsing through real estate ads.