Sweet Wayfaring

St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney ... a great place to worship this Christmas. It is time to take a blog break until sometime in the New Year. I'd like to wish you all a wonderful Christmas and a happy New Year.  Thank you for all of your comments and friendship throughout the year, it has made it a great pleasure to record my travels.

We end this trip with a view of the valley below the falls.

Fitzroy Falls are in the Morton National Park.

After lunch we took a drive into Morton National Park. Here the scenery is quite similar to the Blue Mountains. You can tell the photos were from last last year because it was an incredibly hot day and before the extensive rains we have experienced this year has started to fall.  The visibility was extremely poor due to smoke from bush fires.

We stopped for lunch at Bundanoon and settled for simple fare ... a typical Aussie pie.

The stencilled sign at this 'old and junkie' antique shop took me aback it says Guns and Toys.

There are quite a few little towns in the area, most with an antique shop.  Here they come in two flavours  - the old and grand to furnish the mansions and the old and junkie where you say "I remember Mum and Dad had one of those".

The Southern Highlands are quite up market with lots of expensive properties and beautiful gardens.  Walking the streets with the weekend people doing their Christmas shopping you get the sense of this.

We spent the day doing the normal things, trawling bookshops and antique shops, eating and keeping and eye out for new Royal Hotels to add to the collection.

We are heading to the beach soon. Too fill in until then I'm going to show you some shots from a trip that we took to the Southern Highlands this time last year. At this time of year the yummiest fruit is available from the roadside stalls -- mangos, apricots, peaches but best of all cherries. We bought a box.

On the way home we stopped to eat at the Cafe at Foxwood Farm at Running Stream, where the fire was warm and the home made pies simply delicious.  This is going to become a familiar haunt for us because the big news is we've bought a bush block in the small village of Clandulla which is a stone's throw from here. In the New Year I will be blogging all about it. In the meanwhile that's it for this trip, a new short trip starts tomorrow.

More pretty scenery through the splashes of rain.

To wrap up we took an afternoon stroll and I picked the roadside flowers.  When I walk around home I don't pick things ... after all it is ingrained in us not to pick the flowers in the national park.  But this isn't a town in a national park and these are all weeds so I was perfectly happy

We were pleased to discover that as part of the festivities the Sydney Male Choir  was doing a concert at the local school.  It was quite a treat, I like choirs and they were very entertaining. And as a bonus at interval there was a traditional country afternoon tea.  I haven't seen such a spread of cakes and slices since my home town.  It made our day. We train travellers had to escape the concert a little early to go catch our train.  We didn't dare miss it, we felt we had dun all there was to do at Dunedoo.

In our attempt to find amusements I would have liked to walk around the town streets but it was raining all the time and we didn't have umbrellas.  It is a typical town with a mix of old and new homes.  This cottage near the railway station was probably once the station master's cottage.  I reckon that's an impressive cactus in the front yard. I don't actually like cactuses but I was getting desperate for things to see and do.

It's grain country so there are silos.  Would you believe the sign in the town says "In 2001/2002 a proposal was made to build a 'Big Dunny' in the main street with the idea it would help put Dunedoo on the map and help promote the town's unique name. The proposal was abandoned after public opposition."   Whew. By the way, the name Dunedoo apparently comes from an aboriginal word meaning Swan.

Between feeds we braved the rain to look at the exhibit of historic cars.

It soon became apparent that there is not a lot to do in Dunedoo and the train was not going back until the end of the day.  So we did the museum, had a sausage sizzle at the Lion's tent, visited the antique store, had scones for afternoon tea -- when there is nothing to do why not eat?  But it was all worth it, after all I found a new Royal Hotel to add to the Royal Collection.

It was cold and wet and the whole train load made a bee line for the cafe opposite the railway station.  In no time there was moaning and groaning about the speed of service -- the city types clearly hadn't read the sign.  "We sell good food not fast food."

It was the centenary of the railway link so on Sunday there was a celebratory ride from Gulgong to Dunedoo.  We decided to take the trip on the old railmotor brought in from Newcastle for the occasion. It was shaping up to be another wet day.

They start them young around here ... that is the real estate guide she is looking at.   Mudgee is popular with the city set for small farms and weekenders so is a mix of genuine rural and city slick.  Olive oil, wine, cheese and fine food at the market along with the usual crafty stuff.