Chateau Glenunga: January 2011

Saturday, January 08, 2011

NSW trip 2010/11

We were able to go on a big driving holiday to NSW over the Christmas/New Year period thanks to the generosity of our friends Mark and Lyn. They lent us their VW Tiguan and in return they had our Mini for the time we were away. If we didn't have the bigger four wheel drive we wouldn't have had enough space to pack both dog and clothes.

We left Adelaide on Christmas Day and headed for Swan Hill and a motel where we were able to have the dog with us - they are few and far between! The next day was the big drive, 1,100km. We had decided to NOT do the Hay Plain and take the direct but tedious route. Instead we opted to follow the Murray Valley Highway from Swan Hill to Echuca, Wodonga and Corryton and cross the great dividing range heading up to 2,000m to finish up at Cooma before dashing off to the NSW Southern Highlands and our destination - David's nephew's place at Thirlmere.

Crossing one part of the Mount Kosciuszko National Park took quite a while. It was more or less a lone lane road up mountain and down valley and wound all over the place. We stopped briefly at Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. It's a town of identical ski chalet type houses that are for the people who work on the hydro power stations there.

We reached our destination, Craig's place at Thirlmere, at about 11pm that night.

On the Tuesday a family get together was held at Craig's place. David got to see three of his sisters - Judy, Bronwyn and Veronica. We cooked a barbecue lunch and we ate it at tables underneath the still flowering, giant jacaranda tree. After lunch Scott gave a tour of his chook run and we met Spot and Stripe his two pet sheep.

On the Wednesday Craig, Scott, David and I hit the road again to travel to Bathurst to Craig's friend Olivia's farm near Bathurst. Due to road works it took us two hours to get through a 90km section of the Blue Mountains.

Olivia's property is on a ridge and looks towards the Blue Mountains and is incredibly scenic. It has two dams, a number of paddocks and is stocked with three horses and about 20 sheep. We had gone there as the sheep needed drenching and the horses needed their hooves attended to.

On the Friday we headed back to Thirlmere avoiding the Blue Mountains and taking a huge detour down to Goulburn and then back up the Hume Freeway to home base. We drove through some magnificent country and parts of the drive were new to the local boys too.

On New Year's Eve we went to a restaurant, Eschalot, in Berrima. A 'one hat' establishment - it was pretty ritzy and was very enjoyable. Craig and Scott's friends Jodie and Jason came along too.

We left on the Sunday. We decided to detour to Canberra just to have a look. We went up the Telstra tower to take in the views across the city and did a lap of parliament house and the centre of canberra. Of course, we went around and around the round-a-bouts quite a few times and it took a fair bit of navigation to put us back on the right track and heading to the Hume Highway, Albury and then back to Swan Hill to the same motel.

While we were away our car had decided to snap a belt and blow up part of its cooling system. So Mark and Lyn were without a car for a few days! It spent three days at the dealers getting fixed. Happily we returned the Tiguan in pretty good nick!