Bathurst and the Murray

On leaving the Blue Mountains we drove to Bathhurst as Allen decided he must drive the van around the famous race circuit. Naturally as the only contestant in the race he also won it! It's a great place the way the circuit is part of the public roadway so anyone can have a drive around it without being a danger to the public at large. I wasn't tempted to have a go myself tho.
We drove further south as Allen was looking to visit some of his distant relatives about family tree matters. We arrived at Cootamundra which also happens to be the birthplace of famous cricketer Don Bradman so we took a quick visit to see his old house. We found the relations Ian and Ena Harbrow, and the connection goes a long way back as Allen and Ian's Great Grandfathers were brothers.What we found really surprising was how alike Ian's grandson and Alan's bothers grandson of the same age are. After a bit of a catch up and being fed with lovely food we hit the road to visit the next relations in the same area. This brought us inland from Junee and whilst driving there we met up with a plague of locusts drumming against the windscreen. The locals were not happy to see these as they eat everything in sight especially if its green, even the plastic turf of the bowling club we were told!
When we arrived at Yvonne and Robs were were welcomed with more food and then dinner. After a sample of the home made cherry brandy and a sing along around the piano it was as much as we could do to stagger out to sleep in the van in the yard for the night. Next day took us to visit 2 more of the families and these are rather removed from Allen's branch, but everyone seemed pleased to meet up with any Harbrow no matter how distant.
After this we decided to get onto the Hume Highway and get on the road to Melbourne. We pulled off at a very small place called Barnawatha for just a quick snack, but this turned out to be a very nice pub with some lovely food so I had to sample the curried seafood which was delicious. Here we met a lady who decided to take our travel plans in hand and told us that we had to spend the night parked by the Murray River, she even drew us a map where to go and then organised where we were to go the next day and where to get back onto the Hume Highway. Later on she also brought us a cutting out of the newspaper on cheap boat fares to Tasmania. We followed her plans and were rewarded with a red sun set on the Murray and a visit to the lovely historical towns of Chilton and Beechwood. We finally got back on to the highway and stayed the night in a rest area and drove down to Melbourne through the Yara Valley with a visit to the De Bortelli vineyard on the way.
All the way down this valley we kept on noticing signs saying 'no pipes' and a huge pipe lying there. Later on we started to see the actual pipeline being laid. This is a very controversial pipeline bringing water from the Murray River down to Melbourne. We had heard about this but did not realise it had actually started.
We finally arrived in Melbourne at friend Wendy's on Sunday night (and more delicious food ) 6 days after leaving The Blue Mountains, ready to make plans to visit Tasmania.