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We leave our authentic Aussie hotel for coffee and breakfast in Goulburn, and fill up on petrol (cheapest yet at just over a dollar!).
An hour up the Hume Highway, our first stop is Berrima. Est 1831, elevation 600m, and population 400 (according to their welcome sign). It's a lovely little town of sandstone buildings, including the beautiful looking jail, which is still operational! We pick up a pastel de nata at Two Skinny Cooks, with a cold drink from the quaint General Store (I do love towns with General Stores - they have such an "Olde Worlde" feel).
As we return to the car, a chap approaches us:
"Are you guys into reading? I've written a Latin America adventure story. I spent a couple of months there in the 80s. Would you like to have a look at my book?" We politely decline and back away slowly...
Next small town stop is Bowral, where we discover Dirty Jane's Emporium - entertaining for anyone from Durham, who remembers Dirty Jane's as the provider of chips and dodgy kebabs after a night out at Klute. This Dirty Jane's is chock full of knickknacks and treasures; a bit of a "saw you coming" vibe but not actually overpriced.
In Mittagong we stop for a poke around the Southern Highlands Heritage Centre (highly rated but really only a glorified visitor centre). We avoid the Hume Highway in favour of the Old Hume Highway and other roads now included in Tourist Drive 12. Through Yerrinbool, Yanderra, Bargo, Picton and Camden. As not much to do in either of the last two (although the shops looked tempting), we drive up to Burragorang lookout.
A fun drive leads us to the breathtaking view of Lake Burragorang in the Burragorang Valley; Burragorang means "home of the giant kangaroo". As this is now a reservoir (notwithstanding strong local resistance to the flooding of the valley, rather like Queens Valley at home), huge swathes of the forest around the lake are out of bounds to walkers, with even larger tracts forbidden to vehicles. This means we can look down at the trees by the lake in the knowledge that no one has walked there for decades!
Drive country roads through gorgeously green landscape to Penrith, and pop into a surprisingly posh Westfield to pick up supper.
After some chat with tonight's host (including an interesting discussion about what has surprised us about Australia - our answer, that we thought we'd have seen more scary creepy crawlies!) we retreat to our room to watch Last Leg Down Under. They make a lot of how many flies there are in Aus, which greatly entertains us!
AB
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