Eugowra

As I mentioned in my previous post we travelled to Eugowra for lunch on Friday.

Eugowra is another of those little towns I have a soft spot for.  In the mid to late 1990s banks closed in all the little towns and government services were somewhat lacking.  Add to that the increased use of the internet, but not all that many people had their own computer or internet access in their homes. 

A federal government initiative was started to create Rural Transaction Centres (RTCs).  The first ever RTC was established in Eugowra.  The credit union I worked for provided the financial services and I occasionally travelled out to provide relief staff. 

The service is still there, however is now in a different building.

This is the building I worked in, which is now home to a hairdresser's.

After a delicious lunch in the recently refurbished pub we went exploring.

Eugowra is a town that has lots of murals.  This is not just a recent initiative, it's been going on for years.  They do add to them each year and next weekend will see a further three added to the town.  Come for an explore.

I didn't know that the granite in the new Parliament House comes from Eugowra.

This benign little creek can become a raging torrent and cause serious flooding in the town.

The old Imperial Picture Theatre is now the supermarket.  It was also used for dances, but due to changes in movie watching became a supermarket way back in 1967.  I'm sure it could tell some stories of events held over the years.

This is Ben Hall country.

"The Fat Lamb" was a rather popular pub in the area and sadly burnt down in 2012.

It's nice to see that it lives on in a mural.

This is as close as you will get to a train in Eugowra these days.

While looking for murals we came across another park  with an impressive War Memorial, complete with wreaths.

We were surprised to see an old fashioned metal slippery dip like we used to play on when we were kids.  You don't see many of them left.  Mick was disappointed there wasn't a rocket to climb in as well.  The church in the background was nice and tidy.

There is even a butchers and coffee shop.

Not a good photo, with the sun in the background, but there is a nice little craft shop in the building next to the pub.  Some yummy sauce came home with us.  They even have a sign in the window advertising their monthly craft gathering.  Good to see.

I hope you enjoyed our wander. The weather was perfect for doing some exploring, with no time constraints. 

Eugowra is only small, but it is nice and clean and tidy and has a positive feel about it.  So nice to visit.

The wind picked up quite a bit on our way back into Canowindra, raising quite a bit of dust.  There would be no balloons in the sky that afternoon.  We had noticed that as we travelled west of Canowindra the landscape dried out considerably.  They are still in desperate need of rain.

On our driving through the country side we came across this historic old woolshed on the property "Bangaroo".

I had a little look online to see what I could find and stumbled upon an aerial photo here.  From the little I could find, "Bangaroo" was one of the earliest pastoral stations in the area.  There was a school and even a small railway station had that name.  The adjoining homestead, which I couldn't get a decent photo of, is a huge sprawling weatherboard home.  You can see that it was an impressive property in its hay day.  Sadly, the shed is in very poor condition, but there was sheep work going on in the yards as we drove by.