This might have produced a more positive reaction if leaving the car hadn’t involved moving out of the warming sun, but once we’d looked at the window of the antiques store and made a couple of purchases at a rather alternative fruit shop it was Madam’s turn to be unimpressed once we’d driven down the road to Deli Lama and found what she’d just bought was a couple of dollars cheaper there.
Deli Lama wasn’t exactly packed when we wandered in for breakfast, but it seems to do a reasonably passing trade and was probably a better option than the bakery. I doubt the bakery does bacon and egg muffins.
Back in the car we were in for a substantial drive, since it was Thursday morning and we were looking at getting to the Ex-Neighbours southwest of Brisbane on Saturday afternoon.
Now, you might look at the map and figure three easy stages, but Madam had decided Glen Innes was the right spot to stop on Friday night, so we looked for options for Friday’s drive, figured Armidale was probably worth a walk around, so Friday’s drive needed to be reasonably short, and, in turn, that meant we were probably best off spending Thursday night in Gunnedah.
There were a couple of possible routes to get there, so we decided to take advice in Wellington, which was known territory since we’d passed through on the way to Orange and knew the road was reasonable up to there.
Canowindra to Molong was new to us, however, and was a pleasant enough drive. We pulled over for a visit to an ATM in Molong before establishing that our preferred route through Gulgong and Coolah was driver friendly when we called at the Visitor Information in Wellington.
Wellington to Gulgong had looked potentially difficult on the terrain side of things, but turned out to be a pleasant enough drive and it was just after lunch time when we arrived in Gulgong, deciding the historic gold mining town and home of Henry Lawson was worth a wander with or without lunch.
Given the historic status of many of the towns in the area you could probably spend several days wandering around, camera in hand, but we didn’t have days to spare, so an hour or so on the ground in Gulgong had to do. I could probably have grabbed something for lunch, but after the dietary excesses of the preceding week or so I wasn’t over-hungry and was quite happy to wait till the evening for a substantial dinner. More...