Tales From a Female Traveller

If you keep driving north you pass road side stands that sell oranges, peahces, nectarines, macadamia nuts, pumpkins, berries and whatever else the farmers grow. It's nice to see loyalty boxes instead of people manning the stands because if you were 100 kilometres south towards the city the boxes would be robbed on a daily basis and people manning the stands would be shot in drive-by's or harrassed in passing. So it's good to still see that people can live peacefully and honestly, especially considering that the trail is a big tourist weekender drive. Just passing through these towns rubs off its pace on you and suddenly you're not weaving in and out of city peak hour traffic but cruising along 10 k's under the speed limit with no one on your ass blasting their horn at you.

Further on up the trail you can stop and watch a sheep muster down in the valley or read one of the landmarks about the history of the trail and photograph remnants of old bridges and cattle crossings. Usually you'll see families or old people in their BMW's but mostly the drive is pretty easy going with not many other people around. One thing that is common is to see cows standing in the middle of the road, somehow they have managed to bypass the cattle grates and get through the barbed wire to stand stock still in the middle of the road, casually mooing to others in the herd and staring at you as you slow down to drive past. Cows are actually very photogenic and if they gather up enough courage they will sometimes venture close enough to breathe on your camera lense, making for some great shots! That is until something spooks them and they run away, mooing loudly.

Among all the sites to see is the surprisngly large amount of churches you see, both old and new and these also make for some nice shots. Whether you are a religious person or an architecture lover or just like old buidlings this is the place to see it all and most of the churches will have a written and displayed history about their sites and the regions their in. A lot of the time these places will be crowd free too which is a huge bonus if like me, you're looking to get away from it all.

You can stop and eat in one of the many gourmet cafes with their open fires, cozy country furnature and homely country persona or you can take a walk around the towns and browse through their custom made shops. Wollombi is one such place like this and it also is home to a very popular motorcycle roadhouse which sits along the main road just off from the main part of town. We spent quite a few hours in this little town and had a lot of fun photographing items in one shop that specialised in importing furniture, homewares and statues from places like India and Thailand. It's interesting because it's not the type of shop you would expect to see in the middle of the country but it did add to the towns unique character and is apparently a very popular shop. It's funny how people never seem to be happy with what they have. If they live in the city they want a country lifestyle, if they live in the country they yearn for something more exotic...

We could have kept on drivingbut eventually time got the better of us and before we knew it we were heading way too far north and had to turn around and come home. Wouldn't it be nice if people got paid for doing what they love? Maybe then I would be travelling around taking photos and not sitting behind this desk wanting to throw my stapler at every moron who thinks they are king shit.

posted by Lucyspeak @ 10:04 am