A Weekend Away - Friday Fun Day and FNWF

Our plan for Friday was to play the tourist - AKA Friday Fun Day.

The morning dawned clear and the river was so still.

Aren't the reflections beautiful.  The river is quite a bit larger here that at home in Bathurst.

We had popped into the visitor information centre on Thursday afternoon and picked up a couple of brochures of things to see and do.

Our plan was to travel out to have a look at Burrendong Dam, visit the Arboretum, travel on to Stuart Town and then back to the Caves for a tour.  Let's see how we went.

One little brochure was for a tourist drive out to Stuart Town via the village of Dripstone.

There isn't a lot to see at Dripstone.  Apparently, there was a quarry of grey limestone, which was used for some of the buildings in Canberra.  There are a couple of buildings in the village using this stone.  This was the old butchers shop.

The old Anglican church is looking a bit worse for wear.  It looks so sad with no windows or doors.  What a pity it hasn't been used for something.  It is in a lovely setting.

Our next stop was Burrendong Dam. The building of the dam commenced in 1946, but due to budget restraints etc, it wasn't completed until 1967.  

I remember going for a drive to see the new dam.  Quite a few dams were built or enlarged in my early years and we went to see a few.  We have several photos in the family album of dams, and not a great deal of family.  I found it incredibly boring at the time. 

This is also on the Macquarie River and supplies water for a huge region of New South Wales.  Here is a bit about the dam. It is currently at 112%, but has recently been up to 124% full.  It was down to 4% only a couple of years ago.  What a contrast.  You used to be able to drive across the dam wall to the spillway, but like so many dams, vehicular access has been stopped, to prevent terrorist attack.  It is now a 6.4km return walk to get to the spillway.  It would have been ideal to ride our bikes to have a look, but they were on the back of the van, back at the caravan park. We know that next time we come this way, to have the caravan in tow, complete with bikes.

By the way, if you click on my motorcycles page here and scroll down, the photo of "Sophia" and her little red trailer was taken on the wall of the dam, back in the days when you could drive across it and the water level was quite a bit lower.

Our next port of call was the Burrendong Arboretum.  We had heard of it, and would have thought it started in the 1980s.  However, it started back in 1964.

Mick was very happy to "spotto" a couple of bottle trees near the entrance.

After reading some information boards, we went for a drive around.  The Arboretum covers 164 ha, so quite a bit to see.

A feature is Fern Gully.  Anyone who knows Wellington, knows that it is generally hot and dry in the summer, so not really the climate for ferns.  Looking at the photo board above, you can see what they started with.  The main feature is the huge canopy of mesh and brush to create a microclimate.  There are also sprinklers throughout.

They must have struggled so much during the recent drought years.  

It is looking quite lush now, but you can see that it has suffered.  What is amazing, is that everything is done by volunteers.

Early March was probably not the ideal time to visit the Arboretum, as there is very little in flower.  We would like to visit again in spring.

Back in the car we kept on our way, travelling through the village of Mumbil.  No photos, as it wasn't terribly photogenic.  The village was created in the 1940s to house the workers building the dam.  There are several small fibro houses, which were for the married workers and a larger fibro building, which was the dormitory for the single men. 

Our destination for the day was Stuart Town.  The village was originally named "Ironbarks" and came into being due to the gold rush in the mid 1800s. There were lots of ironbark trees in the area, so I could see where the name came from. It was made famous by Banjo Patterson's humorous poem "The Man From Ironbark".  Jack Thompson reads the classic poems so well.  Have a listen here.

Firstly we had a picnic lunch in the park, before going for a wander.  Our little brochure was very helpful in telling us what we were looking at.

Next to the park is the Post Office in a lovely old building, which was originally the Railway Hotel.

It had some lovely features.

This cutey was "Mrs Crick's Drapery". Wouldn't you like to have popped in there, back in the day, to have a browse.

The railway station has been restored and is maintained by the locals.  The XPT passenger train does stop here upon request.

There was an interesting art installation, creating a ghost building on the footprint of one of the old railway buildings.  Very clever.

Other than the post office, the Ironbark Hotel, formerly the Australian Hotel, is the only business still trading in the village.

Here are a few of the other interesting buildings in the main street.

The village, on the whole was nice and tidy.  We guessed that they may have a progress association, or something similar, that keeps all the grass on the footpaths and public areas mowed.  There is a free camp at the Recreation Ground, which also has a hall dating from the gold rush era, which is maintained by the community.  We didn't get over to see that.

There is a "Man From Ironbark Festival" held in Stuart Town each April.  It would be fun to go along one year and see the village full of life.

Our original plan was to then go and visit the Wellington Caves, but we were about touristed out and it was quite hot.  Therefore, we headed back into town, a drive of 30kms.

The previous day we had noticed a retro milk bar "Milky Daze".  It was the perfect weather to call in and sample their ice cream cones.  Definitely a big tick.  Just what we needed.  The decor was fun, too.

Then it was back to the van to have an easy remainder of the afternoon and evening.......well that was the plan.......

Firstly, I popped down to visit the goats again.  The two friendly ones came running up to the fence.  The white one with the big horns stuck its head through the fence, so I gave it a tentative scratch on the nose and ended up giving a good old scratch behind the horns.  How it liked that!!  Not something I ever thought I would be doing.

It was the first Friday of the month so Friday Night With Friends, hosted by Cheryll.  I still don't have my hand stitching organised, so grabbed this little kit that has been hanging around my sewing room for I don't know how long.  I got myself settled in my chair in the shade and started stitching......but.....

Remember I said we had lovely neighbours.  Well, we got chatting and not much stitching was done.  Yep, that is all I achieved.  Oh well, it's better than nothing and now I have a project I can pick up when I want.

Once we got chatting, we decided that the four of us would go out to dinner together at the Lion of Waterloo Hotel, which was built back in 1841 and licensed in 1842. It is the oldest trading hotel west of the Blue Mountains.  You can read some of its history here.  It was an easy walk from the caravan park.

It is a lovely old rustic building, of slab construction.

The bar had lots of character.

The meal was delicious.  Just as well we could walk it off on the way home.

For a relatively small town, there was certainly lots to see and do, and naturally, we didn't get to see it all.  

I'll be back shortly with the last couple of days of our weekend away.