Bells Line of Road

We returned to Sin City via Lithgow, a small mining town on the western edge of the blue mountains, where we stopped for lunch at the local working mens' club (the workies). A childhood spent drinking bitter shandy in the Penketh and Sankey Labour Club (where he was serving behind the bar at fourteen) has left quite a mark on Batman, who still finds it impossible to pass any establishment offering a meat raffle, much as I've tried to beat it out of him.

The funny thing is, the older I get, the more I love this kind of thing myself, because the sort of people you meet down the workies make a refreshing change from the terrible competitive snobs you meet in professional (or city) circles. And the Lithgow workies is a real gem of a find because not only are they holding a meat raffle but they also serve a cracking roast lamb dinner for $10 (£4) and a kid's serving for $4.50 (£1.80), a far better bet than a $60 breakfast bill for breakfast at bill's down in Darlinghurst.

(And this marks us crossing the line between tourist and resident because there's no way the tourists would find the Lithgow workies - the tour buses don't stop here. How ironic that half my family don't speak to me anymore because they think I've gone posh).

Now the people of Lithgow have it made because apart from the meat raffle, there are two huge bowling greens (I counted 61 people bowling in the midday sunshine) and the members get a free meal on their birthday. The place was so busy we couldn't find a parking spot and the inside was buzzing with retirees playing bingo or chatting by the plate glass windows, and people of all ages queuing up at the carvery.

There's absolutely nothing like this in Britain as far as I can think, at least, nothing on this sort of scale. It makes me wonder what our old people do with their time because here they can rock up and have a cheap rounded meal every day, catching up with their mates. Surely once you get to your seventies this sort of place becomes a lifeline for your general wellbeing and I couldn't help thinking it was the sort of place I'd be happy to grow old, unlike the UK, which is beginning to seem very depressing again since the sun's come out and Australia is sprouting out all over.

Anyway, after we left Lithgow we followed the convict-built Bells Line of Road back to Sydney, which takes a bit longer but offers much better views across the mountains, a bit like the grand canyon in parts (in fact there's a place here twinned with Flagstaff Arizona and having been there, we can see why). Unfortunately there were no decent vantage points so I couldn't get a photo.

At the end of the road, we stopped at Windsor, which is set on the Hawkesbury River. Windsor is one of the oldest inland settlements in Australia (one of the so-called Macquarie towns because it was deliberately planned by governor Macquarie in the early days of the settlement). There are some nice old buildings here, some very Australian-looking (see photo) and some very British-looking, but they haven't made much use of the river, which is as wide at the Thames running through Berkshire yet has all the charm of the Mersey running through Warrington, which isn't much.

Ella didn't care though. She has a new hobby-horse called Ned (hand made in Orange from some sort of mop, as you'd expect) and she rode him right the way down the main street in Windsor, across the road and down to the river, where he enjoyed a handful of grass and had a poo under a tree.

Aunty Lou will approve of him, I think, though hopefully he won't end up in a box under her stairs.