I’m not feeling particularly happy or charitable tonight. That’s the bad news.
The ESC is working perfectly. That’s the good news.
I’m getting tired of the rain. Not the rain, per se, but the effects of the rain. Cold, wet, difficult roads. You know how it is.
We stayed at the Cowra showgrounds last night. And when I say showgrounds, I don’t actually know where the showgrounds were, but we didn’t appear to be anywhere near them. When we asked Dolly for directions, she took us to the showgrounds entrance, several streets away.
The place we stayed was somewhere else entirely. And it was wet. And boggy. And muddy. And I have to say that they didn’t do themselves any favours, because there was nowhere for you to direct your grey water except to discharge it on the ground … which exacerbated the problem.
Being the righteous and thoughtful person that I am, I shut off the valve on our greywater tank and collected it all, for the greater good.
I had planned a long hot shower at the amenities block before retiring for the night, but I’d popped over earlier to use the facilities, and the showers were … uninspiring. I can’t really explain that, except to say that it wasn’t a place that I felt like taking myself for a shower, and being able to feel comfortable. I wouldn’t have been able to relax.
It was just one of those uninspiring places. Besides that, I wasn’t sure whether dog-paddle or breaststroke was the best way of getting back to Percy after my shower – figuring that I would only have ended up very muddy again in the process of navigating the vast expanse of water between the shower block and home.
So I elected to have a short, hot shower at the van.
We woke this morning in the usual way – by opening our eyes – and it was around 7.30am again. That is becoming a bit of a habit. One that I am going to have to break because I will be expected to be at work not long after 7.30 when the holiday is over and I am back to reality.
We really are creatures of habit. Showers, coffee, labneh on toast for MBW and muesli with yoghurt for me. Locked everything down, hooked up Percy and off we went.
Off to look at the Cowra Japanese Gardens.
So here is a fun fact. Cowra had a Japanese Prisoner of War facility back in the day. Seems like a funny place to have a PoW facility because it is a long way from anything, but I’ll have to do some research on that.
Anyhow, after the war, and after the bitterness and hatred had subsided (their words, not mine), Cowra formed some sort of alliance with their Japanese sister city and they ended up building a Japanese Garden.
A very pretty Japanese Garden, as it happens.
We rocked up to the venue at opening time – 9.00am – and were asked to choose from a selection of entry options. Adult, senior, child.
Seemed like a funny way to do it, but we live in a funny world. Given that we identify as seniors, we opted for the senior price and the young lady behind the counter didn’t even bat an eyelid. We asked if she needed to see our National Seniors cards and she declined the offer.
I couldn’t figure out whether that means that we look like seniors, or whether she couldn’t have given a rat’s armpit if I’d said we identified as cats.
Anyhow, $10 better in my pocket, I guess.
Despite the incessant rain, the gardens were beautiful. Sorry, I went a bit overboard on the photos 🙁
I wanted to ask if Mr Miyagi would be interested in popping around to our place to give our hedges a bit of a trim, but MBW thought that would be either a) racist or b) in poor taste. I just figured that it was proof that I really was old enough to have seen the original Karate Kid movie when it came out, as evidence of the senior discount.
C’est la vie.
After the gardens we headed off towards Mudgee. There are two ways to get from Cowra to Mudgee – the A41 via Bathurst or the A32 via Molong and Wellington.
We have been through Bathurst previously; in fact it was the last road trip if I remember correctly. So this time we went the other way. Kilometres and time are roughly the same.
But the A32 wasn’t a great road. It was really hard work with Elsie and Percy wanting to bounce in different directions, and another day of playing dodge the potholes.
I’m not saying that the other road was better, but I suspect that it probably was.
Lots of other drivers kept getting held up by some silly old fool towing a caravan at 20km/h below the speed limit, but I let them all pass when I could.
We stopped into Molong (population 1,674) for a coffee at a place that rated very highly on Google reviews. And it was a great coffee, with an equally great chocolate, chocolate chip muffin, plus a nice chat with the friendly chap and his wife who ran the place.
It really is worth a visit if you happen to find yourself in Molong NSW.
We did a quick walk around town in our endless (and fruitless) search through Op Shops for an old fashioned ice-cream scoop (I still don’t know what it is or what it looks like), or any further Nelson DeMilles.
What I DID notice in the Vinnies though was not lingerie, but a couple of copies of ”50 shades of grey” … and it just made me wonder what the ladies in the CWA would think of that if they knew about it.
Molong is a very pretty little town, like all pretty little towns. Old, historical buildings, and a main street wide enough to swing a full bullock team around in one clean turn.
Back to Elsie, and onwards towards our lunch stop at Wellington (population 4,077). A much more industrial little town complete with their own McDonalds and KFC.
A sandwich at the side of the road for lunch, and onwards, always onwards.
We had a few moments of sunshine that raised our hopes and our spirits, only to have them dashed again when it started raining again a moment later.
We passed possibly the largest solar farm in the world …
Roads were predictable and boring. Predictably boring. Boringly predictable. And rough. And just when you thought you were past the worst rough bits, a sign pops up and says “Caution: Rough surface” and they get even worse.
That’s when we knew that Percy’s ESC was working, when he locked on his brakes and I lost about 5 years of my life.
We finally arrived in Mudgee at the showgrounds around 3.00pm.
Even though they don’t take bookings, we called ahead and were told (after we asked for something close to the amenities block to save MBW a long hobble) that they had chosen powered site 22 for us.
They have 23 powered sites, numbering from 1 – closest to the amenities block – to 23 – furtherest away. And we had site 22. Figure that out for yourself.
And we needed a hose that was about 30m long to reach to the tap, and we needed a power cord about 30m long to reach to the power box. Probably 50m long if you wanted to run them both in a way that nobody else would a) drive over them or b) trip over them.
After a follow-up discussion with the camping coordinator, we were told we could move to “17 or 18 if that was more to our liking”. And it was closer to the amenities block. I’m not sure why that offer wasn’t made before. Another mystery.
But we still needed to pop out to Bunnings for hose fittings to join our hoses together, even with site 17.
It’s a lovely showground, but poorly organised, poorly managed, and their whole attitude just made me cranky. Crankier.
Oh and they didn’t give us the toilet code, because we hadn’t paid yet. Even though they were happy for us to pay in the morning. Go figure.
But it wasn’t just us apparently; it seems that they consistently didn’t give the shower block codes to anyone because the opening comment from anyone else in the camping area that you bumped into was ”excuse me … do you know the code to the toilet?”
And the stupid toilet light was on again, and I found myself stumbling around in the dark on the other side of the showgrounds trying to find the elusive dump point.
And it was dark. And muddy. And boggy. And dark. And it’s still raining. And it’s still a long walk to the amenities block, even though we are 5 sites closer than we were before.
Not. Happy. Jan.
Dinner out at the Lawson Hotel for a steak (me) and a Parmy (MBW). We were supposed to have dinner with our middle son who was working in the area up until a couple of days ago, but he has now gone back to somewhere else because that job is finished.
So MBW and I went by ourselves. And we had a lovely meal.
I had myself a long, hot shower in the amenities block to wash away the stress of the day and I’m sure – after a good night’s sleep – that I will be back to my usual cheery self.
It could be worse though. Queensland could have lost the State of Origin. We still have that!
This is what today looks like. Only about 240km, but it took us about 6 hours to achieve it.
Ciao
#RoadTripNSW2023