Now is the time to hit the 'fast forward' blog button.....we lost all the photos we took of the sector between Coonabarabran and Orange (courtesy of the hackers), so rather than resorting to endless paras of prose, let me merely report that the 315 kms of our journey to Orange on the last day of September, through Gilgandra, Dubbo, Wellington and Molong, was uneventful.
Once we left Dubbo we were into new territory again, and as I have said so often about this phase of our trip, we continued to discover some marvellous new towns, large and small, which we fully plan to revisit at our leisure.
We are not sure if Orange will be on that list. The park in which we spent the night, the Colour City Caravan Park, was fine. We had a good, large level site, the amenities were more than adequate and the outlook over the nearby showgrounds was relaxing, but our brief sortie into town brought a different experience.
Now I fully admit our flit in and out of the Orange CBD was brief, and some of the parks and gardens did appear inviting, but the roads were the worst we have ever encountered in a major town, the traffic was horrendous and there was nothing we saw which really screamed "come back, come back". I rather suspect we are being a little harsh on Orange.....it was late in the afternoon and we were tired. I'm sure we'll revisit in more favourable circumstances.
We were off again first thing the following day, heading south-east through the lush landscape outside Orange in the early morning haze. This really is stunningly picturesque country, where the rolling green hills are dotted with trees of all sizes and shapes. High on many of the hillsides stand large and imposing homes, testament to the wealth of this district. Irrespective of what we may or may not have thought of Orange itself, its surrounds make a visit to this area more than worthwhile.
After a little over 50 kms of travel we could just make out the outskirts of the large town of Bathurst through the haze.
In no time we were driving into this bustling town,
past the sign to the motor raceway for which Bathurst is so well known,
before joining the early morning town traffic as we made our way to a refuelling stop.
It was about now that our day began to unravel. There are two alternative routes south from Bathurst to Goulburn, one of which showed on our maps as being unsealed in large sections. The other, through the forest plantation town of Oberon, was depicted as fully sealed....that will do us I thought. I knew that this would take us through some pretty steep country on the edge of the Abercrombie River National Park, but had no idea of what we were about to face.
All was well as we drove on out of Bathurst
and arrived at this junction. Given the way in which this road sign is set out, our instincts immediately told us that we should turn right here and indeed, if we had not studied our charts beforehand, that's exactly what we would have done. But no, we had chosen the route through Oberon, so we pushed on straight ahead.
I have to admit we were a little edgy, but even although the hills were becoming much steeper and the road was narrowing, this was still a doddle compared to some challenges we had overcome in the past,
and the views across the hills from some of the ridges were well worth any effort this was taking. Fools in a fools' paradise, that was us!!
We bypassed Oberon and made our way through the charming little settlement of Black Springs without incident.
And then we were confronted with this sight. Now sadly, this is one of those occasions when the camera actually does lie.....this and some of the following shots do not in any way provide the real picture. We had hit the section which was about to take us through the edge of the Abercrombie River National Park, a stretch which had looked somewhat interesting, even on the detail-bland standard highway maps.
What we were staring at was a roadway which had contracted to little more than one lane wide, alarmingly steep and winding, with nothing between us and the steep, heart-thumping drop to our right but a flimsy fence which would not hold back a determined sheep let alone an errant motor vehicle.
Again, I have to stress that the photos do not do this justice. To make matters worse, we had just passed a large timber jinker stationary in a layby at the top of this descent. God forbid that we would confront one of these coming in the opposite direction.
Another really annoying, and potentially dangerous aspect of this section of the road was the fact that there were no signs providing information about the degrees of slope. I have learnt to rely heavily on these to choose the right holding gear and use the compression of the cruiser's engine to assist with braking. As it was I took the conservative decision from the outset to go into low range, second gear....and what a wise move that proved to be.
For the next fifteen minutes we crawled our way up and down the steepest, narrowest road we had ever encountered,
through numerous hairpin bends (one of which we only just managed to negotiate without having to resort to backing up for a second try)
and over rough, single laned bridges, where, had it not been for the fact that I knew large trucks used this road, I would have had grave doubts about their capacity to take our combined weight.
At no stage did our speed climb above 15 kph. The one saving grace for us on this entire section was the fact that we were on the 'hill' side of the road. We did pass oncoming traffic in several spots (at less than 10 kph) and I took some perverse comfort from the fact that in the event of a scrape it would not have been us hurtling over the edge irrespective of what other damage we may have suffered.
Again I have to emphasise that the few shots Liz managed to take when not calling the road ahead for me, particularly on the approaches to the hairpin corners, do not show just how really frightful this stretch of the road is. I have never before felt the need to stop and 'take a blow' at the end of any passage of driving....today was the exception.
As a postscript to this story, the friends with whom we stayed in Canberra and others who joined us later in Yass, all of whom know this road quite well for one reason or another, were aghast to hear that we had hauled the van across it. I have to say that did make me feel better....bragging rights retained!
It was an understandable pleasure and relief to make it through and again be traversing a 'normal' secondary country road, where the towers of a wind farm stood high on the ridge over historic Taralga.
As we eased through the main street of what appeared to be a town of charm and grace, Liz grabbed a shot of the most important building in the main street! If ever I were in need of a 'comfort stop' of the alcoholic kind, this was the moment, but we valiantly resisted the temptation.
We were now less than 50 kms from our destination, the Governor's Hill Carapark (sic), Goulburn, where our day did not improve one jot. This is not a park for big rigs. When I had booked I was at pains (as always) to confirm our size and was assured that this would not be a problem. I was told that there was one good drive-through site which would be more than adequate. What I had not been told was that this was on the edge of the entrance driveway.....completely inappropriate.
The staff here, I have to say, were nothing if not obliging. It is not their fault that the park they manage is totally inadequate in respect of accommodating large, modern vans. We found ourselves squeezed on to a site which was only just long enough, and, as you can see, so narrow that any thought of pulling out the awning was but a dream (unless I parked the cruiser in the street).
I was not happy, believe me, and no amount of music from one of the oddest park amenities we have ever come across, 'The Singing Ants',
nor the dubious attraction of the nearby park games room did anything to restore my good humour.
The amenities here are good, the surrounds are pretty enough, and as I have mentioned, the staff are most welcoming and obliging, but the narrow park roads and ridiculously tight sites take away from all that.
Well, at least were were here in one piece, and at last the trials of today's relatively short, but very trying trip, were behind us.....or so we thought. Shocking road, poor park site...that's two. These things always come in threes.....surely not now, we joked.
We spoke too soon, as those of you who read regularly would be aware. Within the next hour we realised that our computer had been hacked and all our stored files, including many recent photos, correspondence, and the electronic copies of all our 'important papers', had been encrypted and corrupted. The screen on our laptop was frozen with the message that we had been violated and that there was nothing we could do about it other than follow the directions to pay to have the material restored.
Bullshit we would pay! After the utter fury, frustration and futility we felt subsided, and we thought the matter through, we jointly rejoiced in the wisdom of Liz having regularly downloaded many of our photos onto a separate hard drive (her selections only, I might add) and we rationalised that most of the documents which had been corrupted were still available to us in hard copy in our storage shed in Adelaide.
All that now remained was to scurry around an unfamiliar town in the hope that we could find a local computer whizz who could rid us of the blight of the hackers, restore our operations and install a programme which would prevent a repetition of this criminal invasion of our system. What are the chances, we lamented, knowing we had but one day in which to achieve this. This really was the last thing we both needed late on this particular afternoon (of all afternoons) when the only things we wanted to do was to have a 'sundowner' or two, a good feed and and early night.
I won't bore you with upshot, chapter and verse. Suffice it to say, Goulburn harbours a computer genius, we were able to find him, and, after he and his staff worked for ten hours on our little black box, electronic peace was returned to our lives, although to his great professional (and, I suspect, personal chagrin) they could not restore our corrupted files.
This, I have to say, was the least of our concerns, particularly when our newest 'best friend', Richard, from JPS IT Support, told us that the restoration fee demand could be anything between $6,000 - $10,000 and even then there would be no guarantees. His fee of $180 was modest in the extreme by comparison. What utter bastards these hackers are.
Richard went on to tell us that they were riding in on the back of false Australia Post emails. That had been our downfall....we were expecting a package from a friend through Australia Post and had made an electronic enquiry, the response to which we understandably both not only expected but thought was legitimate. What a lesson! The really galling aspect of this whole wretched business was that we are both anal about deleting anything about which we are unsure, but in this case the grubs who touched us up had done so on the basis of their replicated Australia Post logo, which I sadly have to admit was very well done.
So it was that after some very anxious hours of waiting and several unplanned trips round the Goulburn suburbs, we were able to reclaim our laptop at 0900 hours and make our way out of Goulburn to Canberra where we were to spend the weekend with our good friends Olivia and Dean, a delightful couple we had first met in Denham and later (unexpectedly) in both Carnarvon and Coral Bay.
Despite the trials of our arrival into Goulburn, the inadequacy of our chosen caravan park and the wretched time with the computer, we came away from this large, historic town impressed with many of its fine buildings and much of the area surrounding it. We shall be back at some stage to look at Goulburn in a different light.
Now I fully admit our flit in and out of the Orange CBD was brief, and some of the parks and gardens did appear inviting, but the roads were the worst we have ever encountered in a major town, the traffic was horrendous and there was nothing we saw which really screamed "come back, come back". I rather suspect we are being a little harsh on Orange.....it was late in the afternoon and we were tired. I'm sure we'll revisit in more favourable circumstances.
We were off again first thing the following day, heading south-east through the lush landscape outside Orange in the early morning haze. This really is stunningly picturesque country, where the rolling green hills are dotted with trees of all sizes and shapes. High on many of the hillsides stand large and imposing homes, testament to the wealth of this district. Irrespective of what we may or may not have thought of Orange itself, its surrounds make a visit to this area more than worthwhile.
After a little over 50 kms of travel we could just make out the outskirts of the large town of Bathurst through the haze.
In no time we were driving into this bustling town,
past the sign to the motor raceway for which Bathurst is so well known,
before joining the early morning town traffic as we made our way to a refuelling stop.
It was about now that our day began to unravel. There are two alternative routes south from Bathurst to Goulburn, one of which showed on our maps as being unsealed in large sections. The other, through the forest plantation town of Oberon, was depicted as fully sealed....that will do us I thought. I knew that this would take us through some pretty steep country on the edge of the Abercrombie River National Park, but had no idea of what we were about to face.
All was well as we drove on out of Bathurst
and arrived at this junction. Given the way in which this road sign is set out, our instincts immediately told us that we should turn right here and indeed, if we had not studied our charts beforehand, that's exactly what we would have done. But no, we had chosen the route through Oberon, so we pushed on straight ahead.
I have to admit we were a little edgy, but even although the hills were becoming much steeper and the road was narrowing, this was still a doddle compared to some challenges we had overcome in the past,
and the views across the hills from some of the ridges were well worth any effort this was taking. Fools in a fools' paradise, that was us!!
We bypassed Oberon and made our way through the charming little settlement of Black Springs without incident.
And then we were confronted with this sight. Now sadly, this is one of those occasions when the camera actually does lie.....this and some of the following shots do not in any way provide the real picture. We had hit the section which was about to take us through the edge of the Abercrombie River National Park, a stretch which had looked somewhat interesting, even on the detail-bland standard highway maps.
What we were staring at was a roadway which had contracted to little more than one lane wide, alarmingly steep and winding, with nothing between us and the steep, heart-thumping drop to our right but a flimsy fence which would not hold back a determined sheep let alone an errant motor vehicle.
Again, I have to stress that the photos do not do this justice. To make matters worse, we had just passed a large timber jinker stationary in a layby at the top of this descent. God forbid that we would confront one of these coming in the opposite direction.
Another really annoying, and potentially dangerous aspect of this section of the road was the fact that there were no signs providing information about the degrees of slope. I have learnt to rely heavily on these to choose the right holding gear and use the compression of the cruiser's engine to assist with braking. As it was I took the conservative decision from the outset to go into low range, second gear....and what a wise move that proved to be.
For the next fifteen minutes we crawled our way up and down the steepest, narrowest road we had ever encountered,
through numerous hairpin bends (one of which we only just managed to negotiate without having to resort to backing up for a second try)
and over rough, single laned bridges, where, had it not been for the fact that I knew large trucks used this road, I would have had grave doubts about their capacity to take our combined weight.
At no stage did our speed climb above 15 kph. The one saving grace for us on this entire section was the fact that we were on the 'hill' side of the road. We did pass oncoming traffic in several spots (at less than 10 kph) and I took some perverse comfort from the fact that in the event of a scrape it would not have been us hurtling over the edge irrespective of what other damage we may have suffered.
Again I have to emphasise that the few shots Liz managed to take when not calling the road ahead for me, particularly on the approaches to the hairpin corners, do not show just how really frightful this stretch of the road is. I have never before felt the need to stop and 'take a blow' at the end of any passage of driving....today was the exception.
As a postscript to this story, the friends with whom we stayed in Canberra and others who joined us later in Yass, all of whom know this road quite well for one reason or another, were aghast to hear that we had hauled the van across it. I have to say that did make me feel better....bragging rights retained!
It was an understandable pleasure and relief to make it through and again be traversing a 'normal' secondary country road, where the towers of a wind farm stood high on the ridge over historic Taralga.
As we eased through the main street of what appeared to be a town of charm and grace, Liz grabbed a shot of the most important building in the main street! If ever I were in need of a 'comfort stop' of the alcoholic kind, this was the moment, but we valiantly resisted the temptation.
We were now less than 50 kms from our destination, the Governor's Hill Carapark (sic), Goulburn, where our day did not improve one jot. This is not a park for big rigs. When I had booked I was at pains (as always) to confirm our size and was assured that this would not be a problem. I was told that there was one good drive-through site which would be more than adequate. What I had not been told was that this was on the edge of the entrance driveway.....completely inappropriate.
The staff here, I have to say, were nothing if not obliging. It is not their fault that the park they manage is totally inadequate in respect of accommodating large, modern vans. We found ourselves squeezed on to a site which was only just long enough, and, as you can see, so narrow that any thought of pulling out the awning was but a dream (unless I parked the cruiser in the street).
I was not happy, believe me, and no amount of music from one of the oddest park amenities we have ever come across, 'The Singing Ants',
nor the dubious attraction of the nearby park games room did anything to restore my good humour.
The amenities here are good, the surrounds are pretty enough, and as I have mentioned, the staff are most welcoming and obliging, but the narrow park roads and ridiculously tight sites take away from all that.
Well, at least were were here in one piece, and at last the trials of today's relatively short, but very trying trip, were behind us.....or so we thought. Shocking road, poor park site...that's two. These things always come in threes.....surely not now, we joked.
We spoke too soon, as those of you who read regularly would be aware. Within the next hour we realised that our computer had been hacked and all our stored files, including many recent photos, correspondence, and the electronic copies of all our 'important papers', had been encrypted and corrupted. The screen on our laptop was frozen with the message that we had been violated and that there was nothing we could do about it other than follow the directions to pay to have the material restored.
Bullshit we would pay! After the utter fury, frustration and futility we felt subsided, and we thought the matter through, we jointly rejoiced in the wisdom of Liz having regularly downloaded many of our photos onto a separate hard drive (her selections only, I might add) and we rationalised that most of the documents which had been corrupted were still available to us in hard copy in our storage shed in Adelaide.
All that now remained was to scurry around an unfamiliar town in the hope that we could find a local computer whizz who could rid us of the blight of the hackers, restore our operations and install a programme which would prevent a repetition of this criminal invasion of our system. What are the chances, we lamented, knowing we had but one day in which to achieve this. This really was the last thing we both needed late on this particular afternoon (of all afternoons) when the only things we wanted to do was to have a 'sundowner' or two, a good feed and and early night.
I won't bore you with upshot, chapter and verse. Suffice it to say, Goulburn harbours a computer genius, we were able to find him, and, after he and his staff worked for ten hours on our little black box, electronic peace was returned to our lives, although to his great professional (and, I suspect, personal chagrin) they could not restore our corrupted files.
This, I have to say, was the least of our concerns, particularly when our newest 'best friend', Richard, from JPS IT Support, told us that the restoration fee demand could be anything between $6,000 - $10,000 and even then there would be no guarantees. His fee of $180 was modest in the extreme by comparison. What utter bastards these hackers are.
Richard went on to tell us that they were riding in on the back of false Australia Post emails. That had been our downfall....we were expecting a package from a friend through Australia Post and had made an electronic enquiry, the response to which we understandably both not only expected but thought was legitimate. What a lesson! The really galling aspect of this whole wretched business was that we are both anal about deleting anything about which we are unsure, but in this case the grubs who touched us up had done so on the basis of their replicated Australia Post logo, which I sadly have to admit was very well done.
So it was that after some very anxious hours of waiting and several unplanned trips round the Goulburn suburbs, we were able to reclaim our laptop at 0900 hours and make our way out of Goulburn to Canberra where we were to spend the weekend with our good friends Olivia and Dean, a delightful couple we had first met in Denham and later (unexpectedly) in both Carnarvon and Coral Bay.
Despite the trials of our arrival into Goulburn, the inadequacy of our chosen caravan park and the wretched time with the computer, we came away from this large, historic town impressed with many of its fine buildings and much of the area surrounding it. We shall be back at some stage to look at Goulburn in a different light.
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