Skip to main content

Warm fire


We settled on the rather unpromising looking place over the road from the Royal. Pleasant to warm up by the fire.

In light of some of the questions about the closed shop the other day I thought I would add some commentary here about country towns. While we were sitting by the fire I overhead a conversation about where the local people shopped ... Mudgee or Bathurst. These regional cities are each 60-70kms away in opposite directions so they could take their pick but apparently the Mudgee trip involves dirt road.

Now not so long ago, country people stuck exclusively to their own town. All the facilities they required were within the town but that is no longer the case, the banks moved out, the goverment facilities moved out, the hospital closes, the grocery shop is no longer viable because people travel to the big towns to do their business and shop there, the kids have to go elsewhere for jobs, the churches empty and slowly but surely the fabric of a town shuts down. Some, like Hill End have an interesting history and a quaintness that lets them turn to tourism as a lifeline. Others just fade away.

Tourism attracts arts and craftspeople so a form of renewal begins. Also with the connected society of today it's now possible to work remotely and hold down some types of 'city' job in the country. Perhaps we are going to see a new era for country towns.

Comments

  1. Such a warm and cosy winter collage!
    I enjoyed readind what you wrote about abandoned cities. Life is a constant change.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Although I was born in the Sydney suburb of Hornsby, I grew up in Denman in the Upper Hunter Valley. At that time it had a population of just over 800 souls. It is sad to see places like that wither and die. However, with the advent of the computer, as you say, maybe there is change on the wind. Thus far, people seem mostly attracted to the seaside, but that is not for me.

    The images here, JE, are wonderfully warm and reflective.

    ReplyDelete
  3. These are wonderful pictures and they capture a "feel good mood"... in fact I like the whole abandoned building "series"...

    ReplyDelete
  4. The town where I was raised started to go into the doldrums as described but has become quite vibrant again ... the land was cheap and attracted "blockies" which in turn rejuvenated the community. 'Twas a terrible shock to the locals some 30 years ago when "strangers" started moving in but in the end it was the pulse of new life.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Coolibah?

Is that a Coolibah tree beside the abandoned house? Every Australian knows about Coolibah trees because the bush ballad Waltzing Matilda is nigh on our unoffical national anthem but most of us live nowhere near the inland where they grow. Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong, Under the shade of a Coolibah tree, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me. Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda, You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me, And he sang as he watched and waited till his billy boiled You'll come a Waltzing Matilda with me.

The end

I retire from the workforce this week and to celebrate have decided to retire my current blogs and start afresh with a single consolidated blog -  My Bright Field  - to record the delights of my new life adventure. If you are interested follow me over there.  I will still be Sweet Wayfaring and collecting Royal Hotels.  The delights I discover along the way will appear together with my gardens and towns where I live.

Brown streams and soft dim skies

I gave my husband a thick book on the history of Australian Art for Christmas. It documents just how long it took the artists to paint what they actually saw -- at the hands of early artists our wild Australian landscapes looked like rolling green English countryside. Today's photo has "that look" so I have referenced words from the poem describing England. It was Christmas Eve. We were camped by the Tumut River in the Snowy Mountains of NSW. A shady spot planted with exotic trees from the "old world" and with the soft burble of a swiftly flowing stream. Bliss after a hot afternoon drive. But the old world dies slowly, a hot roast for Christmas dinner followed by plum pudding is one of those traditions that just won't die. Knowing we were going to be on the move on Christmas Day we settled for having our traditional hot meal on Christmas Eve this year.