Tassie Day 7

Fortunately, last night was not as windy as the one before for our Wind In The Willows campsite.

We packed ourselves up and headed off to the popular, historic town of Richmond, where we found a nice little Farmer's Market.

Cakes for morning tea and some nice crisp apples were purchased.  We found a sunny spot to enjoy the cakes and coffee.

The garden was nice and bright.

We had a good look around the place, admiring the old buildings.

I loved the texture of some of the weathered stonework.

Richmond Gaol looked interesting, but we gave it a miss this time.

Richmond is most famous for its sandstone bridge, the oldest in Australia, dating back to 1823.

It was a glorious sunny day and many people were taking advantage of the weather to enjoy time in the parks.

We have been seeing quite a few of these fowls over the last few days.  I've finally had a chance to take a photo so that I can identify them when I get home.

We've also seen loads of black ducks.  There are more on the Derwant River than I've ever seen before, just no oppurtunity to take a photo.

After Richmond, we headed north along the Midlands Highway.  There are some wonderful old buildings along the way.

We started to see some cut outs of historical scenes, which were rather eye catching.

We also noticed that the landscape is very similar to that of the Central Tablelands.

We deviated off the highway to visit lots of little villages and localities.

We feel we have travelled around the world today, visiting the Middle East with Bagdad, Jericho and crossing the Jordon River, passing Tumbridge in the UK, and we saw the sign to Interlaken in Switzerland.

It was all rather picturesque.

Our next stop was the small town of Oatlands, which has some of the best well preserved sandstone buildings.

Don't you love the stork nesting on the chimney.

The reason we stopped in Oatlands was to visit the windmill.  Unfortunately, we had missed the last tour for the day.  Not to worry, we will backtrack tomorrow and have a look.

We had afternoon tea in their cafe and noticed a quilt depicting all the silhouettes we had seen as we came along.

How good is that.

In the meantime we had a poke around the antique shops.  We've commented that you won't find a bargain down here, but it is still fun looking for something unusual, not that we can fit much on the bike.

We went into one antique shop.  Ther was so much stuff in it you could hardly move and things were piled up.

I snapped a couple of photos as I was just amazed at the state of the place.  We were about to leave when Mick wandered back to this section.  See the spindle backed chair at the front.  See another chair sort of behind it.  See something sitting on the seat of that chair.  I had previously missed it, being overwhelmed by so much stuff.

How lovely is that!  I have quite a few old Peri-Lusta threads at home.  Yes, all very nice, but we are on the bike.  Yes, but I have squeezed in a Royal Doulton Tea Set once before.  Let's see how it goes.

Beautiful.  It actually works really well.  All the loose bits and bobs that were in the top box are now nicely packed in the tin.

We have brought a rather large piece of green depression glass home on the bike from Western Australia once.  We just couldn't carry any cold food from then on, as it took up most of the esky.  We also brought an antique bed home once on top of our caravan.  Where there is a will there is a way.  I just had better not find anything else on this trip.

We are now camped in a rather nice caravan park at Ross, on the banks of the Macquarie River.  This is the other Macquarie River, just to make us feel at home.  We've even have a picnic table.  Luxury.

Ross is a delightful place.  We went for a bit of a stroll this afternoon, but will have a better look tomorrow.

I even found some patchwork inspiration in some verandah floor tiles.

We are going to stay here tomorrow night as well and just have a lazy day poking around the area.  It should be good.