The Waiting Man

An overnight roadtrip, just to finish off what's been a well-travelled year

Dropped a yowling Bella off at her Vet lodgings on Wednesday morning & headed south-west for Cootamundra & Junee. Why? Well no particular reason, save that we'd driven through & past those towns & country a few times without ever really stopping there & it looked nice. And only approximately 6 hours drive from WaitingManor? Easy!!

Cootamundra is the birthplace of Australian cricket hero Don Bradman, a master batsman who played for & captained Australia between 1928 - 1948, playing only 52 Test matches in that time (well... there was a minor global conflict that took 7 years to sort itself out!!). These days, players can notch up 52 Test matches in no time at all - Steve Smith, a current Australian batsman, has played 91 Test matches since his debut in 2010!! The most famous Bradman statistic is his batting score average of 99.94 runs per innings. It would have been 100 if he hadn't been bowled out for 0 runs in his final inning... if he'd just scored 4 more runs... No other cricketer EVER has a batting average that high. The next closest is Adam Voges, another Australian who only played a comparative handful of matches, with 61.87. Bradman was so dominant that the English cricket team who toured Australia in 1932 had to come up with a style of bowling designed specifically to restrict his run-scoring (&, to be fair, several other Australian batsmen who were also excellent players), by aiming to bowl straight at the body... at pace & occasionally at head height. 'Bodyline' bowling certainly curtailed Bradman & the Australian team, but its use was quickly banned by the international cricket community after that tour... & after many concussions, bloodied noses & bruises... there were no helmets or body pads used back in those days

Anyway, Cootamundra is rightly proud of its most famous son... in a subtle way


Gum tree for scale...

Having been more of a bowler than a batsman back in my school sporting days, I couldn't resist having a crack at that wicket...



The cricket ball came from the Bradman Museum down the road from the Oval, inside the house where he was born &, on Wednesday at least, manned by a septuagenarian cricket & rugby league fan who very quickly had me pegged as someone 'good for a chat' when Long-Suffering Partner & I walked in. It took me 15 minutes to try & pay him the entry fee then actually go into the rest of the place. Fortunately there were other visitors arriving as we left or we might still be there

On to the town of Junee then - about 30 minutes away & a larger town than Cootamundra (it has 3 pubs!!) with a nicely restored railway station...


That clock's only right twice a day though...

Junee's only connection to sporting greatness is being the birthplace of Ray 'Rabbits' Warren - a sports broadcaster who started out calling horse races, before becoming 'The Voice' of Australian rugby league & could whip up excitement for any race... be it Commonwealth Games or Olympic swimmers, or 2 blowflies on a pub window


I did expect him to be taller...

Junee also has a chocolate & licorice factory of some repute, so the following morning, in the absence of other breakfast options, we headed down the road to it. Their breakfast menu, fortunately, was full of non-chocolatey options & their coffee was delicious. While eating, I couldn't help but notice a locked cabinet in a corner of the dining area, full of what looked to be whiskey bottles... turned out that a nearby distillery did tastings here & one was due to start in about 5 minutes. A whiskey tasting at 10.30am? Absolutely... don't mind if I do



Corowa Distilling Company, we now know, do a fine variety of single malt & blended whiskeys & have a charming salesman who, if the car parked outside is an indication, roared into town via Copperhead Rd



Did the long drive back to Sydney with the aftertaste of a whiskey party in my mouth & throat... Didn't get breath-tested outside of Yass - I would have been fine, but explaining why I had whiskey on my breath would have been an interesting conversation... Collected Bella from the Vet, headed home, watched the latest Dune movie & to bed

Breakfast today? Across town to our favourite Chinese restaurant, home of the best Shao-Long Bao you'll ever eat 3 servings of...

Back from a weekend away on a... well, how does one describe it? Not a car rally, though we were all in cars. Not a treasure hunt, though we were expected to find & identify clues. Not an orienteering course, though we had to use old-fashioned printed maps to plot our route to a pre-determined destination... Sort of a mongrel breed of all those things, really

We met up with our fellow participants at a large truck & travel stop on the Pacific Highway, about 2 hours north of Sydney, were given envelopes containing our maps, instructions & questions to be answered & headed further north, in a very roundabout kind of way to various small towns, along even smaller backroads, many of which were more pothole than road - consequences of the incessant rain we've been having for 6 months or so, ending up in Wingham, a town that seems to exist only to accommodate the 18 hole golf course on its outskirts, which was where we were staying overnight

Dinner was in the Clubhouse, where a local wedding was also being celebrated in a closed off section. It appeared to be a rather 'intimate' event, as all I could see was the Bride & Groom, one Bridesmaid & a collection of overdressed kids running around the club. I found out later that there were meant to be around 40 people at the reception, but about 30 of them hadn't showed. Given that it was a local event, that doesn't bode well for civic harmony in the near future... it's a small town

Our group of racers/orienteers/hunters were mostly older than Long-Suffering Partner & I, but no less good company for that - & several of them kicked on for a good few hours after L-SP & I had gone to bed - it had been an early start for us to get to the rendezvous point by 8am... That's our excuse & we're sticking to it!

Today, we rallied/hunted/orienteered our way back south, via some other small towns, finishing in Raymond Terrace, a sort of satellite town of the city of Newcastle,by the Hunter River - in fact, until about a week or so ago, a decent section of it was IN the Hunter River, due to the recent flooding, caused by that 6 months of rain I mentioned... However, the riverside pub was full of people celebrating its emergence from the waters & a few of us snagged a large table, traded some tales of the road, then went our separate ways. It was about a 2½ hour drive back to WaitingManor & I suspect another early-ish night for us...

An evening at the CSIRO Compact Array in Narrabri NSW. A 6 hour drive north-north-west & lots of worried looking at the sky, as it was increasingly cloudy & eventually very rainy!!

By sunset though, the storm was departing, leaving light cloud & about 30 very relieved photographers. We were allowed to roam among 5 of the 6 telescopes & incorporate them into our photos, which made L-SP & I very happy - totally worth the price of admission (it was free, you just had to book ahead!!)

I had some annoying camera trouble & I think, in hindsight, a 30 second exposure is a touch too long, but here we are...


Arriving at sunset - 2 of the 6 dishes of the Array


The storm that had rained on us for a couple of hours, putting the whole point of the 6 hour drive in jeopardy... departing!!


Spot the Southern Cross...


Yep... 30 seconds is too long. Looked good on the small camera screen though!!

We'll go back in August, armed with experience, lens cloths & warmer clothes!!

We're off on a 2 & a bit-week roadtrip through country & outback New South Wales & Victoria...

Our vague plan is to follow this trail, but there are likely to be many detours, knowing us!!

See you soon... ish

... delayed due to travel (a road trip, coincidentally!!), but I'm back!!

1) What's the furthest place you've traveled to in the last 12 months?
In the last 12 months it would have been our road trip around New South Wales, as we couldn't go anywhere else! 4,100 kilometres in total, the furthest point was probably the town of Broken Hill, close to the South Australia state border

2) What's the most interesting small town within driving distance?
Driving distance for me is anywhere up to 4 hours away, which brings places like Canberra, Dubbo, Mudgee, Anna Bay, the Hunter Valley & Oberon into the circle...

3) What's the coolest tourist attraction in your city?
You've got the classics - the Bridge, the Opera House, Bondi Beach... but the coolest is probably a tie between the Royal National Park, or the ghost tours of the old Quarantine Station...

4) What was your favourite road trip you took as a kid?
Most school holidays, my Father & I would load up his WWII jeep & head for his brother's farm/property in Armidale on New South Wales' central tablelands. Although it's only about a 5 hour drive, we used to take anywhere from 4-6 days to get there, mostly because we never took the highway & were more than willing to get distracted by small towns & mountains/forests/rivers/caves we'd never been to before...

5) How often do you feel like you've got to get away?
The trip we've just returned from was only to Canberra - about 3 hours away, so only a short drive & we were only away for 2 nights... So we'll probably need another longer & further one by about September - or someone could get hurt!!