Millthorpe

We continued away from the Blue Mountains towards Bathurst, though as it was drizzling when we got there and we couldn’t see anything worth stopping for, we carried on towards Orange on a detour recommended in the Lonely Planet guide to New South Wales.

The drive across this central region of rolling green farmland reminded us a lot of home, though there were no hedgerows or dry stone walls separating the fields, so it all seemed to go on forever. Even some of the trees looked European, though occasionally we came across a dead kangaroo or a dead wombat and we remembered where we were. And every so often we’d see a pair of red parrots pecking about in the red earth at the side of the road, kind of like Wales, but then again, not.

The detour took us to a village called Millthorpe, which the guide book describes as seeming like it’s recently awoken from a long slumber. I think that means it’s not really been discovered by the tourists yet, though with Lonely Planet on the case, it won’t be long until it is. The first photo shows the view up Pym Street, where we had lunch in the Old Mill Café, a very British-feeling place that must be competing for the accolade of coldest toilets in the whole of Australia because the dunny felt like a January day on the Yorkshire Moors. The second photo shows the railway station, which looks very much like an Australian station ought to.

Everything else on Pym Street was closed, except for the shop selling patches of fabric for patchwork quilt makers. As I can’t sew, there was nothing here for me beyond the spinach and ricotta crepe, so we moved on.

As soon as we reached Orange we stopped at the side of the road to hunt down some produce, and within half an hour we’d procured a pair of lambskin Ugg boots and twelve bottles of local Shiraz, such is our desire to do our bit for the regional economy.

Something tells me we’ll be going home with a lot less space in the boot by Monday.