Day 20: Canowindra > Gunnedah
There have been frequent references to the effects of cold weather on brass monkeys over the years, but I've never heard anything about similar circumstances involving those flaps you find on the bottom of doors.
It was cool enough when I eventually deigned to depart from under the doona, even with the reverse cycle kicking in, and I was more than a little bemused, having showered and done the rest of the developing pre-departure ritual, to find the metal strip had detached itself from the door when I started lugging the personal effects back down to the vehicle.
Personally, I would have been quite happy to head straight to the local bakery, grab a pie or something similar and headed off towards Gunnedah, but Madam had other ideas, given the number of interesting old buildings in downtown Canowindra that were literally screaming Photograph me!
That wasn’t a problem as far I was concerned, since where the car was parked caught the morning sun rather well. That changed when The Photographer returned, announcing she’d found a couple of things I needed to look at.
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.
The road through Coolah was another pleasant drive and it was four-thirty when we pulled in to the motel in Gunnedah, timing that had Madam heading out the door soon after our arrival to photograph the sunset.
There was a suitable viewing option a block or three away from the motel, so she decided to walk, a decision that didn’t quite take the speed with which night falls into account, and I’d just finished tapping out a bit of travelogue on the iPad when I realised that the shades of night were well and truly with us before Madam had returned.
I spent a relatively anxious few minutes before the return was effected, and once the reunification was effected it was time for dinner. There were a number of options, and with the benefit of hindsight we might have opted for the Indian down the street rather than Wild Orchards across the road.
There wasn’t much wrong with Wild Orchards on the food side of things, but a glance at the wine list revealed a distinct lack of anything interesting to drink if you’re trying to stay away from the usual big corporate suspects and disinclined to shell out big bucks for the upper reaches of the Penfolds portfolio.
Of course, there’s every chance that the story would have been similar regardless of which dining option we’d chosen.
There are reasons why what I’d term the usual suspects turn up on restaurant wine lists over and over again, and those reasons are probably more pronounced away from the major centres, and there’s probably an even stronger tendency in areas where the economy’s being propped up by the mining boom and there are a number of people passing through town on mining-related business.
Gunnedah certainly seemed to be pretty well endowed when it came to dining options, given the fact that population-wise it’s around the same size as Bowen, and one can’t help but wonder why that should be.