Home To Grenfell

The time for our departure wound down over the Easter weekend. We had a wonderful time with our immediate family on the Thursday night and Saturday. That, combined with packing and preparations and working a couple of shifts meant the time flew by. So Linda and I got away at 9am on the dot. Our preference for heading to Burra in SA was to go via Bathurst, Blayney, Cowra, West Wyalong, Goolgowi and joining the Sturt Highway at Hay, then on through Renmark and to Burra. It is actually the shortest way. We preferred it on this occasion as we have gone down the Hume Highway and via Dubbo to Broken Hill several times. So this route was going to be more interesting and picturesque for us. To get to Lithgow and Bathurst we went via the Bells Line Of Road. It was a good trip and we arrived at Grenfell about 3pm. As we only have the three weeks and going along way we are having to do some big kilometres on this trip. So today was 350km. We pulled in to the Grenfell Historic Railway Station which is a free camp in town, just a donation.
There were quite a few vans already there by the time we arrived but there was plenty of room so it was easy to find a spot. We still had a bit to do in terms of putting things away inside the van and making the bed etc. That did not take to long though and we then took a walk up the main street. It was Easter Monday and there was nothing opened unfortunately. It was good to see all the historical buildings. That will come as no surprise to people who have ready my blogs. A lot of the builds were in the 1880s and are still standing.
On returning to camp we checked out the Historic Railway Station. It was a great old building.
There was another railway building which is now the Men's Shed.
We took a walk up the road to the wheat silos. The art on them was great. It was done by a guy who is a street artist from Sydney. He was the same artist that did the Weethalle silos which are terrific. We drive through Weethalle tomorrow so will post some photos of those in the next post. Meanwhile this is the Grenfell silos.
Back to camp. There was a cold wind blowing and it was overcast so I didn’t bother sitting outside. We got more sorted out inside the van and had dinner and relaxed for the night, including some photo sorting and blogging. A good day to start the trip.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Rawnsley Park Station, Wilpena Pound & Blinman

Image
On Monday the 17th April, we left Hawker to head for Rawnsley Park Station in the heart of the Flinders Ranges. There was no rush as we could not check in to the van park till 11am and we only had about 35km to drive. So we had a relaxed drive and stopped off on the way to snap a photo of the some beautiful ranges. Rawnsley Station sits at the base of Rawnsley Bluff. This bluff forms the southern part of Wilpena Pound. The Station is beautifully situated with Rawnsley Bluff on its northern edge, The Chase Range on its eastern side and The Elder Range on its southern side. The whole place, here at Rawnsley Park, Wilpena Pound, up to Blinman, Arkaroola and through Bunyeroo Valley and Branchina Gorge is just spectacular. It is right up there as one of my top three places in Australia. It is that good and I hope to demonstrate to you in this post why that is so. We walked through the door of the Rawnsley Park Office about 10:58am. We did not waist anytime setting up and having a bite of...
Read more

Cobar

Image
On Saturday the 29th April we left Broken Hill for Cobar. We had been to Broken Hill a few times before so we did not need to do any sightseeing. The trip was 450km so it was our biggest days drive on this trip. There is an alternative to pushing right through to Cobar and that is to stay at Wilcannia in a van park that is about 3km out of town which would be OK. But we wanted to push on through to give us an extra day in Cobar. I have never had a look at the mine or anything else there so that was on the agenda. It is amazing how many wild goats there are by the road between Broken Hill and Cobar. The must be millions. Fortunately they are not like sheep and they mostly do not go onto the road as you are approaching. They appear to have a degree more intelligence to know it wouldn’t be wise to run out in front of a vehicle. Otherwise you would have to crawl along at and very slow speed. Having said that I saw about a dozen dead all in one spot at the side of this road once. The van pa...
Read more

Hawker

Image
We arrived at Hawker on Saturday the 15th April and pulled into the van park. There is not much in the way of free camps in the area. There are some farm stays but we were happy to be in the van park there. It is a nice little town. Initially we were planning on a single night there and then moving on toward Maree and seeing Lake Eyre. However we found out that the Oodnadatta Track was closed because of rain that had come down from Cyclone Isla. There was no certainty as to when the road was going to open. So I rang Willow Springs Homestead near Wilpena Pound to make a booking but found they could not fit us in. I was a bit disappointed as I was looking forward to going to Willow Springs for a change. But we had a good fallback position which was to stay at Rawnsley Park Station. We have stayed there a couple of times before and it is a beautiful property. Even at Rawnsley there were only two powered sites available from the Monday. So I made a booking for the Monday to Thursday and de...
Read more