Sweet Wayfaring

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.

And I wrap up this trip with the Royal Hotel at Ganman.

But wait, no trip is complete until a Royal or two has been added to the collection.  This one is at Grong Grong.

Trains, old and new, are another favourite with us so we checked out the Goldfields Railway before heading back home to Lawson.

At the Read Heeler bookshop in Echucha their thing is dogs.

With me begonias come a close second to roses.  The begonias in Ballarat are awesome.

Over the road from the rose gardens in Bendigo, a beaut second hand bookshop.

I am not sure which obsession is greater with me ... books or roses.  Either way I loved the rose gardens in Bendigo.

Back at the van with all our packages.  It's a bit like going on a shopping trip in Tokyo.

I loved the Hill of Content bookshop.  I am wondering however whether it is 'con-tent or con-'tent. I will settle for the latter.

I was trying to explain to hubby which one was the Kay Craddock Antiquarian Bookshop.  It's the one with all the owls, I said.  I don't remember any owls, he replied. He must be blinded by the book selection.  There are owls all over the place.

Waiting for the train to arrive.  We are on our way to Melbourne to check out the bookshops.

When I was furnishing our 120-year-old home I frequented antique shops.  Now I am trying to downsize to a 60-year-old home I don't do it much anymore.  But the Restoration Barn in Castlemaine was pretty special.  I love the chandelier of old lamps.

Back in April we took a tour down to Victoria and camped at Castlemaine for a few weeks. We chose Castlemaine because it is nice town with a caravan park near the botanic gardens but more importantly it is central to quite a lot of small towns all with bookshops - so I am calling this our Bookshop tour. This is Stonemans in Castlemaine.

Royal Hotel Durban South Africa I have updated the Royal Collection at last!  We now have 130 Royals including a recent contribution of 10 Royal Hotels from South Africa .   I have seen 96 of the Royals myself, just a few more to go to reach 100.

We spent one night at Lawson, where the daffodils were beginning to bloom, to unpack the van then headed out to Clandulla where as expected the wattle welcomed us home. That's the end of this trip, I hope to retire before we set off again.

From here is was a quick drive along fast familiar highways to home and I began to think of yellow things … the canola just beginning to flower, the daffodils I expected to find in my garden and the winter wattles welcoming us home.

We were having a coffee at the bakery and I noticed a sign on a hotel saying it was a Cobb and Co coach stop.  That got me wondering if there was a hidden Royal Hotel in the town.  A quick google revealed not that hotel but this derelict one as the former Royal.

We decided to stay a couple of nights at a favourite campsite by the Murumbidgee River and nestled between the wonderful old wooden bridges at Gundagai. I am hopeless at taking iPhone photos, that's my finger in the shot.

We planned to stay in Lockhart for two days but it rained all night and the next morning the creek outside our van door was looking like this so we decided to move on.