Sunday not too far away

I hope people will forgive the wordplay about a great movie.  We got a bit away from home today, but definitely not too far.  Before getting to that here are a couple of snaps from home.

As it was early in the morning a White-eared Honeyeater was looking a tad bedraggled after its bath,

 On the other side of the house some 'roos were reacting to the heat in the maner of the small dog.  Totally sacked out.

They probably felt safe because the neighbours were keeping an eye on things (without getting too carried away in the activity department).

 Anyhow, about noon we had decided to go for a trip, following up on a report in the Canberra Times about an interesting sounding Gallery near Braidwood.  I had rung the owner of the Millpond Farm, Anthony Davies to check it was open, and he had given easy to follow directions to the place.

We combined the outing with a visit to the Bungendore cultural centre.  Obviously a popular venue but the bulldozer has obviously been on other duties!

So we went through Braidwood and out to Jembaicumbene.  The final track on to the property was a tad average in quality but Anthony - the owner - explained that it had been inundated for a long while after the rain of early 2012.  Here is the mill building, with sculptures as part of the "Best in Show" exhibition of dog art out the front.  

Anthony soon appeared and enthusiastically and expertly explained to us about the history of the building, the property and the area.  (Anthony To say he has much energy is a major understatement.  The news page of the Mill website shows some of the information.

I didn't take photos inside the mill as that seemed a bit rude with the art all around, but Anthony took us over to the barn to look at their carriages.  They restore these as a business, many being imported from Pennsylvania.  The barn itself was a restoration with a major part of that work being straightening it up by putting a rope around it and pulling with a tractor!

The soda wagon here came from Glenelg (SA) jetty.  Frances was impressed to think that her Dad might well have bought a drink from it if it was still going in the 1930s!

This carriage seems to have been mainly rebuilt around a set of metal bits.  The wheels are made by the Amish in Pennsylvania and assembled on site.  The shafts are also made on site from imported hickory.

There are also a lot of vintage cars being restored.  This de Dion Bouton was obviously towards the end of that process.

A nest-full of swallows looked down on proceedings.

Overall, the place is an astonishing undertaking with an amazing array of interesting projects in hand.  I'm sure we will be going back to look at their later exhibitions, and wish them success.

As we headed back towards Braidwood there was obviously a lot of rain happening in the surrounding hills.

Once on the Kings Highway (the main road from Canberra to the Coast) we were astonished at the amount of traffic in both directions.  It seems strange that there was a heavy flow of ACT registered vehicles heading down at 3pm on a Sunday: presumably folk spending the next week there.  Some of the driving was very low grade covering the disassociated passive - too slow - and disassociated active - too fast - categories.  A few sightings of Mr Plod were made as expected.

We got rain as we went through Bungendore but there had been none at home.  Then the heavens opened and we got 15mm in about 30 minutes.  Another 16mm came through the evening.