Day 11 Leaving from Bathurst to Cowra

Wednesday morning, another cold one.  What can you say about Bathurst?  It gets cold.

But it is an historic town, that doesn't seem to promote all the early features of its beginning, there are so many stories that could be told.  Did we miss them? Perhaps they are all in the Historical Museum, but not available 24/7.

 Another interesting aspect of the path we are on, is the Inland Stock Route.  In the 1880's and 1890's John's great great grandfather and his uncles traveled this route with sheep.  12500 of them, and they drove them from Roma in Queensland to Broadmeadows in Victoria, just so the sheep could eat.

Can we find any reference to this? No.



After a detour to a delightful old town Coracoar which has the most amazing old buildings, and is home to a Foot Race every year.  It is almost as though the residents closed the shop doors and walked away. But there is a Retirement Home tucked away in a quiet lane way adjoining the old hospital.

 The country is green, dotted with sheep, lots of them.

We arrived at Cowra and settled into a van site and a studio cabin.  Not the park I was supposed to book, but at least there are no cockroaches on the bed, like was in Bathurst.

First stop was the Tourist Information Office, which is an absolute credit to the town council.

Roses, roses and roses, they are so beautiful.  The caravan park gardens have lots of roses, and the woman here told me that they are hard work, trying to keep the spray up to them.  So the Council are really doing a good job.  There are more than 800 variety of roses and come from Treloar Roses in Victoria.  The climate here is appropriate.

Double delight roses like dad used to grow

Mary lost in the roses

  

Cowra.  Famous in Australia for some sad reasons.  It was a Prisoner of War Camp in WW2.  It held Japanese, Italian and Indonesians.  Rounded up sometimes by the British Army from South Africa, and from those living in Australia.  One of 28 such camps.  But the only one where there was a mass breakout, by the Japanese in August 1944.

241 Japanese killed, 4 Australian Army personnel killed, and it took 7 days to round up all the others who escaped.  War is as it is.  Those killed are buried in the Cowra War Cemetery, and the Japanese War Cemetery.

The Information Centre has a good history and a hologram type presentation outlining the events.

 Off to the actual camp, it was 70 acres in total.

After the War Camp visit, we visited the Cowra Cemetery.  It incorporates a huge cemetery, and a War Memorial Section, and a separate Japanese War Cemetery.  We noticed that most of the Japanese buried here were middle aged.  That indicated that they were rounded up from other areas, and may have been pearl divers in West Australia.

 

 

Next stop was the Radio Tower Lookout, with impressive views across the valley, and stunning proteas!

 


Then there is a quite remarkable attraction, art on the pylons of the bridge over the Lachlan River!

Into town to ring the Peace Bell, styled on the original at the UN headquarters in New York

 

Then back to the cabin for wine and cheese, and a decision to have dinner at the Cowra Services Club, which provided a pick up bus.

After being so cold in Bathurst, the sun and the weather was much appreciated.  As we are close to the highway we noticed on semitrailer in particular which indicated it was carrying Watervale Beef.  We had never heard of it!

Thanks to Mr Google, it was the brand of beef distributed by Breakout River Meats in Cowra.

On the menu was surf and turf, rump steak for $16.  It was melt in your mouth beef.  Just so tender.
The Cowra lamb was on strike.

A bit of research and it seemed that the beef could be bought online.

This beef would have appealed to my son-in-law Craig, who really appreciates a good steak, and his corn beef, done the Australian way!  Currently he works at Ok Tedi, and he recently sent me a message.  The menu said corn beef on the menu.  So he opened up the meal, "That's not corn beef he told the chef, "yes it is, steak with a can of corn on top",, was he "longlong"?

My PNG friends would understand.

This trip to Cowra has a lot of photos, which I have taken for Fiona.  Our English friend's daughter.  Fiona's husband is Japanese, and she runs a very successful English school there.  Bit of distance between the days when she was at Bovo School with our son.

Hope you enjoy them Fiona!