Location: Bathurst, Wombat, Bethungra, Hay, Wentworth, Morgan

Regions: Nepean – Blue Mountains, Central West and Far West NSW

State: New South Wales

Time: 24 July – 27 July 2023

Average Temperatures: -4.0 – 22 degrees

Reason: Travelling Australia – visiting family

After a lovely week in Bathurst we set out for Morgan in South Australia with about 1060 km of travel so we planned to take four days to get there.

First stop after leaving Bathurst was Wombat, which mainly consists of a pub! Wombat is about 20 km’s from my hometown of Harden and I had promised Rob a beer there one day so we stopped in and had a lovely chat to the owner who told us the pub was for sale. It had been closed the last time we went past so hopefully someone buys the charming country pub!

Our first overnight stay was at a camp by donation at Bethungra which is between Cootamundra and Junee. A lovely little camp with a a great camp kitchen, organised by locals who have done a great job! We visited Bethungra Dam and the Rail Spiral the next day before leaving which was fascinating and well worth a visit.

The second day, saw us travelling to Hay, which is halfway between Sydney and Adelaide and a place I’ve always enjoyed travelling through, with the wide plains either side but despite promising Rob Emu’s and Camel’s we only saw 2 Emu’s (no photo though). At Hay we camped at Sandy Point on the Murrumbidgee River, part of the Murray-Darling system and still in flood after recent rain.

We aim to walk around each town we stay in and Hay has Silo Art which depicts images of those who fought in WWII. I was reading that Hay had an extraordinary amount of enlistment for a regional town and the subsequent number of lives lost deeply affected the area.

Out last overnight was at Wentworth just outside Mildura. Another free camp on the Murray just past the conjunction of the Darling River and Lock 5, a really lovely spot. We had a campfire too, which was a treat.