I'll huff and I'll puff

A reasonable nights sleep, apart from waking as a huge and noisy train rumbled through as was the case at Bathurst.

Some rain and wind were forecast for Orange on the 16th.  As we lay in bed at 5:30 we could hear this happening.  Then things turned a bit flappy and as Frances looked out the window we could see that the weather had got a tad innovative with the annex.  Some frenzied action - with astonishing little bad language - followed and in 15 minutes normality was restored.  However this does confirm our view that today is the better day for driving and tomorrow for walking around Orange.

In fact the weather hadn't finished with us.  It then pissed down and eventually the weight of water on the annex caused a corner to collapse.  In struggling to re-erect it with very wet and somewhat cold hands a pole got snapped.  That seemed to be able to still function, but given the very strong wind forecast for the late afternoon we weren't at all sure what the situation would be after our day out.  (It was surprisingly good, but did prove a distraction through the day!)

Our chosen route was to go through Wellington.  We had intended to cover this town on our big trip earlier in the year but were distracted by animals on bicycles. In fact sculpture again formed a distraction as we came across this work (by Frances Ferguson) about 7km before the town.  I shall probably augment this report later but here are a couple of images to start with.

The vertical elements of this were salvaged from a railway bridge which collapsed into the Macquarie River.  Here is some detail of the wall around the 'pod';.

I have been surprised at the amount of Grevillea robusta along the road.  According to Plantnet it is native to the North Coast and naturalising  on the North-West slopes - I think the latter is going on further South.

 This is a close up of G robusta in a park in Wellington.

Frances had read recently that Wellington was the methamphetamine capital of NSW so our expectations were not high.  In fact it was a lovely spot with many old buildings, a great park by the river and a very charming lady in the Visitors Centre.  (Also some excellent fellow tourists, including Harry the Jack Russell)

For some reason the main War Memorial isn't in the Register: it soon will be!.

 A huge pine tree attracted a bunch of crazed Little Corellas (if there is any other sort of this species).

 Possibly it was a screw pine?

This is I think a very colourful legume - sorry, member of the Fabaceae.  Big tree, not a shrub or herb.

 After leaving Wellington and not not pausing to take a snap of the slammer sorry, Christ shit sorry again, I mean Correctional Services Centre, we ducked around the airport and got to Bodangora War Memorial. Tick - sorry it is a bit like train spotting, but so is twitching birds!

We progressed on and found the memorial in Goolma.  I knew there was one in the Register and headed towards a sports field.  Frances was alert and saw a flag pole and some Rosemary: bingo!

We then swung into Gulgong where the nice lady in the Museum (sorry I dion't have a good look at it, but I was still distracted by the weather, and wanted to keep moving) told us where the Memorial was.  Very attractive it was too!

I decided this set of plaques deserved a wide audience!

As did this interesting garden bed surrounded by Wiradjuri (I assume, they are the local mob) designs.

We then got to our target town of Mudgee.  They had a range of War Memorials.  The most obvious was this clock in the middle of the main street.

Moving on to Robertson Park this bandstand had a plaque honouring the blokes who fought in the Boer War.

 Also the main cenotaph.

There was quite a lot of interesting architecture around the town.  A pub ...

 .. the Post Office ..

 .. and the Regent Theatre ....

.. were the example I snapped.

We drove back via Ilford (no memorial and thus not a town - but see Nonny Mouse's comment below), Sofala and Bathurst - visited previously so no stopping due to camper anxiety!