Sweet Wayfaring

Here is one more abandoned shot from my last trip.  I have run out of material again and don't know when I will next go wayfaring. In the meanwhile I will be tripping down a Road that Beckons over a Blue Mountains Journal.

Royal Hotle, Murrurundi Royal Hotel, Scone Diane has been on holiday from Queensland down to Tamworth and the Hunter Valley and picked up two Royals which are new to our  Royal collection .  Thanks Diane! I spotted a wikipedia entry recently which lists all the Royal Hotels and claims there are over 150 of them so we still have a way to go.  I am in two minds as to whether to use the list or to stick to my current method which is to just go explore towns to see if there is one there.

My last image from this trip, found in Mendooran.

Royal Hotel, Mendooran Ah ha, a Royal Hotel. When I was looking up caravan parks in Coolah I stumbled across a reference to the Royal Hotel in Mendooran.  It was only 70kms away so I just had to go collect it.

King Togee was the leader of his local tribe, a big strong man standing over 6 feet tall.  Back in the 1850s he was speared by a man from another tribe.  

The street ends at the local cemetery.  And tomorrow I am going to show you another grave that has something to do with a King.

In a country town the wide open spaces are never far away.  Here was a looking over the school yard to the world beyond.

The space to rare animals is one of the delights of country living.

A church in the hill.  That's a common sight too.

A dead shop is pretty much par for the course too.

And every back yard has gotta have a shed, preferably a corrugated iron one.

I looked at the map of the town and while the river had an interesting name most of the streets didn't.  I swung between on Charles Street in memory of my grandfather or King Street. In the end I decided on King, thinking that perhaps it might reward me with a Royal Hotel. It turned out to be just a typical country street. This garden well at the start of the street had me wondering whether it was real.  Back in the old days lots of country homes had wells.  There was a well at the bottom of the garden where I was raised and my parents were always warning us of the danger of falling in the well.

We are at the bottom again and not far out of Coolah.  About the middle of the shot on the right you can see the avenue of poplars that mark the entrance to the town.  It's autumn but we are a little early for them to be putting on a golden display. The Town Well reminds me of the first image in our Road that Beckoned.  I will take you on that walk tomorrow.

Just because I like the image.

We are looking over the undulating land again.  The little lost building in the middle is my only "abandonded" shot on this trip.

We burst out of the forest and back in the farmland. By the way there is a waterfall but I was told the walk is steep. Having seen enough waterfalls and done enough steep walks in the Blue Mountains we didn't bother.

We are one our way back down to the town.  I just liked the "art" of the burnt forest trees.

I am totally in love with them and the way their "hair" falls so neatly.

Oooo they are tall and so incredibly beautiful.

We've gone back down the road and are taking another walking track where they reckon there are giant grass trees.  I am skeptical about that.  But again the track is easy and there are nice things to spot like the interesting bark on this tree.

Here is another look at it before we head back to the car.  The walk is a very very easy grade and easy underfoot.  Unlike walks in the Blue Mountains which are invariably rough and steep.

Here's the view from the Pinnacle lookout.

Diane I am teasing!  Before the view I am going to take you on a little longer walk through the forest to the Pinnacle Lookout. I kept saying gosh there is a lot of "firewood" on the forest floor, to which hubby responded "habitat". There were not a lot of flowers out, autumn is not really a flowery time of year, but I did see flowers and shrubs already familiar to me from our block at Whistler's Rest.  Like this  and  this .

We've reached the end of the road at Bundella Lookout and a nice hint of the good views to come.

At the top of the hill the farmland gives way to the trees of the national park.  The soil is rich and the rainfall high so the trees are tall.  There is good quality dirt road through the park.

Before we hit the trees of the national park I wanted to post one more photo of the rolling hills just to mention how green the grass is at the moment.  The rain has made the hills an even more delightful sight than normal this summer. This shot was actually taken on the trip home.  The grey sky had lifted by then.  Green hills and blue sky .... ahhhh.

I did warn you.  Undulating grassland dotted with trees ... picture perfect to my eye, though the sky was grey that morning.

It's cattle, lamb, wool and crop country.

We decided to spend a few days at Coolah a small country town (population 800) in the Warrumbungles region. We passed through here last year and planned to return to explore further. Coolah is described as nestled in a picturesque valley of undulating hills and river flats 420 kms north-west of Sydney.  Because there are no major regional towns in the area, and no major roads pass through it, the Coolah region is said to be very quiet, safe and bucolic.  It's also the gateway to Coolah Tops National Park. In this series you are in for an overdose of rural scenery because I love undulating land. We will walk the Road that Beckoned in the town. But first of all let's go drive to the National Park where it should be no surprise that we will see trees.