Julia’s travels 2026
Its the first time for ages that I’ve done packing and I’m amazed at how much is technology - four chargers -phone,i-pad, hearing aid pod and watch. It seems excessive. Anyway we got under way after a night in at Finn’s place and set off for Mudgee, stopping for lunch at a curious little place called “29 nine 99 Yum Cha and Tea House”that specialised in dumplings. It was run, rather surprisingly, by two nice old ladies whose welcome seemed imbued with determination as they doggedly dealt with plenty of customers. Apparently they’ve never advertised but all came by word of mouth, as we had. The proprietor of “The Cudgee at Mudgee” where we’d booked for the night told us it was special, and it was. The oriental theme of fans and ornamental bubbling fountains sat alongside large local artworks that covered the walls and in the fireplace was an earthy pot bellied stove. You ordered a plate of pieces,six, eight or ten and chose a pot of tea from a long list and were given a bun at the end.
Mudgee seemed more prosperous than I remembered and rather graceful and sure of itself. Vineyards were all around. We had a good stop at one that had apparently been in the Lowe family for 200 years. We sat in front of the wine barrels on an unexpected orange velvet sofa to taste Shiraz. (Yes, I know, I broke my three week record of abstinence but what else could I do at a cellar door). We looked out on a magnificent spread of luscious grassland vines and hills as we sipped samples of what turned out to be very expensive wine. I bought a couple of bottles, it being a holiday after all. When we wandered the lovely grounds we became aware of a stonemason’s work. Slabs of granite with poetry in French and German as well as a big slab, memorialising a dog that was much loved despite murdering, among many other fellow creatures, five peacocks.
Next day we stopped at the excellent Mudgee Museum - just the kind I like, full of bits and pieces including a vast salt and pepper collection with a rather politically incorrect jolly black Mammy and pepper husband in it. It was tended by an army of volunteers. There was a good hip bath which would have suited me nicely and also an enormous doll collection. They were all standing to attention in their finery staring spookily at me. I didn’t linger there but went into the courtyard where I’m afraid I committed a faux pas in assuming a table with lots of mugs and tea bags was meant for visitors and helped myself. Gradually the whole squadron of volunteers filled the seats around a great millstone. I prattled my apologies but nobody even cracked a smile. “Now you can get on with your secret business” I joked as I left, but that left them cold too.
We took a detour then to a place called Galargambone because we’d read of interesting art in the Main Street. And indeed there was a lovely bullock train, eight bullocks, each different, all of them all made with huge skill out of wire netting. The Main Street itself was mostly little places that had been shops but now housed art works in their windows, all provocative and interesting. A lady was walking her dog and we talked a bit about the town being so quiet and no coffee shop despite its touristic allure. She said all the young people had gone because they didn’t like hard work. They’d asked her to run the cafe but she said she was done with all that. She seemed happy to be living there but perhaps a bit lonely after all. We talked a lot about how country places like this one could be kept alive.
Lots of driving then and we learnt the perils of booking on line. We wanted a pub for a change hoping for a bit of human contact at the bar, and one called “The Thirsty Farmer” had good reviews so I booked. To be fair we were told the cafe was shut, as was the bar and Finn said “Humph, a pub with no beer, doesn’t sound good” but that was the half of it. The whole place was under renovation with bare boards and no toilet paper and when Finn used his code an alarm went off. We cancelled and went up the road to a really nice pub called Reggies with beer at the bar and people to talk to (and a bit of gossip about the disastrous pub down the road). I also talked to a rather beautiful woman by herself nursing a beer can, who told me she was born to a black American soldier in London and had married an aboriginal guy and had lots of children. A long list of her grandchildren was tattooed on her arm “But I’ve had some more since then”. She told me a lot about Lightning Ridge, and how not to boil in the Artesian Spring.
It was a bit peculiar sleeping in the little cell like rooms and being out of contact with each other until Finn taught me how to text instead of ring, which frightened the daylights out of him because it made him think it was an emergency. So much to learn when you are an old lady.
Next day we drove on to The Ridge, and a longish, empty sort of drive it was. I loved the landscape of scrub and small trees and felt they were on my side somehow. This feeling increased when we got to Lightning Ridge, a marvellously untidy place where nothing is as it seems and the signs are surprising eg. SNAKE AND MOUSE MESH for sale in a place I bought a good hat. I discovered today that the shop called Duncan’s Fashions is actually where the best coffee in town can be had and people meet and chat outside sitting at little metal tables. I was there for a bit because when the temperature hit 36 degrees I reckoned I shouldn’t walk about any more, especially since my water bottle had leaked all over my wallet so I had nothing to drink and had to apologise whenever I bought anything.
I called Finn to bring the magic carpet, AKA car, and talked a while to a rather ragged guy with a dog on a rope who’d been here a couple of months and, like a few others I’ve spoken to said he would never go back. He was a scientist, he said. Finn says the place is an open air lunatic asylum “in the nicest possible way” nevertheless, that seems rude. What it is, is amazingly tolerant and full of dark humour. A woman at a neighbouring table took over the roped dog so that the owner could go and get a coffee. People are warm and nice but withering under the heat at the moment and longing for March when you can sleep at night.
There is an excellent tourist innovation here called Car Door Tours. There are Five colours of old car doors and each trip is signposted by a string of blue, yellow, red or green cart doors, each numbered. All four trips take you to fascinating places, mostly amongst the rickety humpies improvised by miners, as it is not permitted to build properly on a claim, which, costing $300 a year, makes for cheap living. Nevertheless there are a few random weird buildings, namely a castle and a rather beautiful house made of beer cans and bottles with elegant windows fashioned from coloured bottles. And all these dwellings, great and small, pop up far out in the stretching dry landscape of white humps of tailings and rusty vehicles and holes covered over protectively with tin or barbed wire. If it were not for the Car Door guides one would be hesitant to intrude on these personal endeavours with their little shelters beside them. I wondered what the aboriginal population made of these fellow creatures who had apparently gone mad and made holes and hills and all for what.
Finn asked me if I’d like to go noodling, that is scavenging amongst the many available hillocks of white stones but I said no. Unlike panning for gold, the findings in their raw state seemed very discouraging and I bought a little bottle of scraps - a chip jar - in a shop.
The opal field that is an hour’s drive out of town has three pubs, themselves built of scraps of this and that but inside, not unpolished. The Club in the Scrub was quite salubrious and a few weathered people gathered at about lunch time. The only people I have ever seen who look as weathered as the old miners were at an anthropology conference where some attendees had lived in their study fields for enough years to almost kipper them.
One special place we saw was The War Memorial, but, as we had come to expect it wasn’t just that, but a memorial to miners too, all with affectionate engraved comments under their names.
All the opal field dwellers seem a bit heat stressed at the moment and I couldn’t blame them - no aircon out there but allegedly clever tunnelling could cool things down a bit we were told.
Everywhere you go there are dark jokes and artistic renderings of life out there. A guy (as in penny for the guy) half way up a ladder. Another, ghastly faced mock up of a miner, asleep in a bucket and so on. However someone had made a labyrinth out of rocks and that had a sort of solemnity. Boredom, I guess, is very much part of the opal quest as is perhaps finding yourself when all else has failed (hence, perhaps the labyrinth).
One truly lovely experience in Lightning Ridge is a dip in the Artesian Pools which are free to all. The big one is deep and hot. No shallow end. Funnily enough, just as one gets used to cold water after the initial shock, so it is with hot water. It seemed intolerable at first and then I swam a bit and it was only just short of OK. But coming out was wonderful and I felt quite high. “Like taking a pill” (not that I do) I said to an old guy there. “I don’t take pills and I don’t like that hot water either” he replied as he went on his way. Well to each their own. I’m definitely going back tonight.
