Fast Cars & Gold Country

We stopped just out of Carcoar for the evening, part way between Cowra and Bathurst before heading on into Bathurst the next evening. As one of the must-do’s we proceeded to drive the Mt Panorama circuit (with caravan). Even Liz found the lap interesting.

We then proceeded to the National Motor Racing Museum, however as Harry was being a toad and Liz wasn’t really interested, Max and I toured inside on our own. Max found the vision of crashes to be the most interesting thing in the whole place, although, surprisingly for me, he also was much more interested in the motorbikes than the cars.

Once we had finished in Bathurst we set of for Hill End, which was a gold mining town that has had much of its early history preserved. We headed up what looked to be an interesting access road (from the map) only to find that it was closed part way there, so turned around and found an alternate track. Once finally there we visited quickly at the visitor centre, where we were directed to an unofficial campsite a few km’s out of town. On the way we drove around the town and decided that it looked a place much more suited to exploring over a few days and a drive past would suffice for us this time. The campsite turned out to be a lovely spot beside a small waterway. It looked like it may have had some surface gold mining many years before from the piles of rock and dirt scattered around the waterway and the kids had a ball wandering around.

Next morning we headed straight out for the Blue Mountains, but stopped fairly early on the trip at a town called Sofala. This is another former mining town that has maintained much of its heritage. A rebuilt bridge featured at the entry to town provided interest and a little of the town’s history before we headed off again.

Next stop was Lithgow, which reminded me a little of Bunbury before it went through its recent growth spurt. One thing we did find was a fantastic little bakery. The best part was that the pastries and other items were as good as anywhere we have been while the prices were much more reasonable than most places.

Finally we headed out for our next transient residence – Bilpin – part way between Lithgow and Richmond. This is one of the very few free camps around the Sydney area and we didn’t see any need in having all the trappings as we were already planning to stay in a very comfortable and well appointed park in Sydney itself.