Every morning we wake to the sound of birdsong. Because we have been staying in different places, the sound of the birdsong has depended on which birds live locally. This morning, on the lake, the birdsong was duck. Not exactly tuneful! It was a beautiful morning on the lake. I decided to try my hand at bird photography. The first thing I learned was that the best way to attract birds is to put the camera away. The birds will pose beautifully but fly away as s...

Today was a day of industrial history. Lithgow is full of it. Not many other people seem to be interested though, and I am not sure why. I find it fascinating. Perhaps that is partly due to the company I am keeping. Val and Steve rejoined us just before 10am and we headed off to Blast Furnace Park (is that the coolest name for a park ever, or what?) The park is on the site of the remnants of Australia's first blast furnace, where our iron and steel industry re...

Today Brett and I drove to Mount Victoria where my mother lives. We first arranged to spend another night at the caravan park at Lithgow. On Saturday night is was below freezing. It was good to have power so we could run the heater. My Dad and one of my sisters also came up to visit and we all had lunch together at the pub at Mount Victoria. Big pub servings, and in an interesting venue, full of historic memorabilia. It was good to catch up with my family. It...

The rain continued all night in Hill End after the storm, and we awoke to winter. No surprise there, I think I wrote in my first blog entry that we were heading south back to winter. Hill End is an incredible place. If you ever get the chance to go there, go there. It is an old gold mining town. In fact gold mining continues there to this day, just without the population. A photographer visited the town in 1872 and took pictures of nearly everything. The photos ...

We woke in Premer to the sound of trucks and sulphur-crested cockatoos. After a lazy start to the day - breakfast and a walk around the extremely small town of Premer (besides the houses there was only a post office and a pub) - we drove to Coolah where we had another wander and checked out a couple of shops. Next stop was Dunnedoo where we had a pie for morning tea (the pies there had been recommended, and for good reason as we discovered). We headed back to t...