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 really got started and before it moved to Port Kembla and Newcastle.

It is hard to describe in words, so I will upload pictures (I took a lot of photos). The scale is immense, but what I really liked were two things. First that you can roam the whole site even though it appears to be extremely dangerous (it has perhaps been vandalised to remove the safety warnings, there were some poles with no signs on them). The second thing was that I was there with my husband who could interpret what we were seeing in greater detail than the storyboards around the site (some of these had also been vandalised, but were still readable). There were enormous engines which pumped hot gases installed when the furnace was running, these were no longer there but you could see where their huge flywheels and crankshafts had been housed.

There were also massive pieces of slag and iron left from when the blast furnace was decommissioned. The furnace was pulled down around it leaving the skeleton of slag with its arms raised to the sky. Too heavy to move and not worth anything. To think of the dreadful and dangerous working conditions people endured, for very little money. Life was tough for iron workers 100 years ago.

Next stop was the Lithgow Small Arms Factory.

It is indescribable. But I will have a go, anyway.

The guys were so excited to be surrounded by so many guns. They could even play with some of them. Steve and Brett got to practice their SLR drills and Brett also demonstrated his father's army weapon, the 303, and his grandfather's, the Owen gun. Steve even had a play with a Steyr for the first time ever. Brett wouldn't touch the plastic gun though.

Check the out the pictures.

The museum display included other items made at the SAF, such as sewing machines, gearbox parts, shearing equipment, handcuffs (where else did the SAF-LOK name came from, guys?), outboard motor shafts, movie projector parts and even tank tracks for APCs and Leopard tanks. This other work was done when Australia was not at war and so had a reduced need for weapons.

They also manufactured Slazenger brand rifles which were designed by an Australian. And Slazenger golf clubs. I didn't even know that Slazenger had their own branded rifles. Golf clubs not such a big surprise.

Upstairs there was a large privately owned handgun collection. About eight million dollars worth. It had been donated to the museum by a Queensland collector who could not find anyone to display it in Queensland.

All I can say about this collection is - wow.

I am totally not into guns, but this collection is incredible. There were so many pretty guns and I took as many pictures of the pretty ones that I could. They were unbelievable. There were like gold ones, ones I had seen in movies, home made guns, commemorative guns (who knew that you could get commemorative guns?? I guess people that like guns would know that...)

Check out the photos (once I have uploaded them). There aren't as many as I would like - I have found that displays in glass cases are actually very difficult to photograph well.

Downstairs was a temporary exhibition of black powder guns. You know - like antique ones. They were beautiful works of art, not just functional pieces of equipment. Matchlocks, flintlocks and percussion cap weapons dating back to, well, centuries ago. It was like a whole bunch of Pawn Stars episodes all squashed together.

I am so glad we visited this museum.

But no rest for the wicked - it was time to visit the State Mine Heritage Centre.

The State Mine was a state-owned and run underground coal mine which supplied coal primarily to the NSWGR (That was the New South Wales Government Railway). Steam trains use coal, you know!

The museum building contains rooms with different themes, which covered safety (hahaha funny, it wasn't very safe), the Lamp Room (it can be dark underground) and pit ponies (some very sad stories there for a horsey girl like me). The mine closed in the early 1960s after a flood. The volunteer guide explained that this was just a handy excuse because the government of the day wanted to close the mine. I guess there were fewer steam engines running on the train lines by then.

The site contains other buildings. One of them, the bath house (it wasn't always a bath house, but that was its last purpose) included an exhibition of trade union banners as well as underground mine equipment. The banners were spectacular but appeared to be quite old and the colours were fading.

Another amazing thing in that room was a mine's rectifier. We had seen another of these at the museum in Gunnedah. Rectifier? What is a rectifier? It converts AC electrical power to DC electrical power. You young people might think that this can be easily done with a little black box between the AC outlet and your phone or laptop, but big ones back in the olden days looked like a Doctor Who monster. Check the picture.

There was also a lot of equipment outside. Most of this was donated from other sites, as most of the local mine equipment was sold off in the past.

Part of the mine site is leased to other organisations, including a train service and restoration business. The guy at the mine museum told us that it did not form part of the museum, but I guess Val and Steve did not hear. They were down the hill looking at trains while Brett and I were checking out the mine shafts and equipment further up the hill.

Next thing the alarms went off in the big railway shed. I turned to Brett and said "I hope that wasn't Steve and Val". We wandered back down to the mine museum building where we found Steve and Val talking to the man. Yep, it had been them. Steve had opened a door to the big shed (well it should have been locked, right?). After 15 minutes the alarm stopped sounding. A couple of minutes after that the building owner raced into the site. Steve went over to apologise and to let him know the door wasn't locked.

In return, the owner offered to let us into the shed to see the big trains close up. I think there is a lesson there, just not sure what the lesson is.

He turned out to be a really interesting guy, he works on the Cape Don lighthouse tender in Sydney Harbour (look it up) when he is not playing trains.

After we left the museum we had a chat about where we were going to stay. We decided to give Lake Lyell a go. Lake Lyell is a dam only a few minutes from Lithgow. We arrived and found a great site just by the shore and within sight of the dam wall and spillway.

Steve and Val stopped on the way for food and fuel. We had had such a busy day we had not stopped for lunch. This was a great spot for a relaxing late afternoon. We quickly got dinner ready before it got too cold.