Saturday, October 9, 2010

Day 34, 9.10.2010, 386km, Griffith

View of Griffith township from the hill behind town
Close up pof Pattersons Curse
Fields of Pattersons Curse - very pretty, but hated by the farmers
Orange Grove at Griffith
I sure can tell that I am back in the south of the country. I was cold today. An unusual feeling after the sweltering tropics. I was late on the road today; just having trouble getting my act together, but when on holidays that isn't a problem. Besides, I wasn't planning on going too far today. I had a look at the old Cobaer Mione before I left. Cobar used to be a huge mining town until the gold, silver, lead and zinc ran out. It's trying to survive on tourism and I noted that there are some new smaller mines opened up, trying to find another profitable ore body. Good luck to them as living in the semi desert wouldn't be a lot of fun. I continued heading south on the long 263km non stop trip to Hillston. What was amazing was the huge amount of Pattersons Curse in the area. If you don'y know Pattersons Curse is a purple weed which was brought to Australia as a garden plant. It has escaped into the bush and become a major problem, ruining huge areas of pasture as the animals won't eat it. It looked pretty though. Hillston was a small sleepy, pretty little town, so I stopped at the local bakery for a coffee and a pie, not wise as my stomach is still giving me some problems. After that it was another 100k to Griffith, where I have a nice cabin for the next two days. Griffith is a huge agricultural town, where orange orchards are every where mixed with large and small wineries. In addition to watching the Bathurst Car race tomorrow on tv, I'll try and get out for a look at some of those over the next couple of days.
Part of the old Cobar Mine area - it really is quite huge

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