Australia here we come!

6/11/12

The girls did some washing today and I caught up on a backlog of the blog. We discovered a water leak in the hot water system that had wet a lot of items stored under our bed. I tightened the inlet and outlet connections and will have to wait and see if that fixes the problem. The rest of the day was spent doing nothing but relaxing.

7/11/12

Today we thought we would see some of the attractions of the Blue Mountains. First we drove to the Cool Climate Botanic Gardens at Mt Tomah and spent three and a half hours walking through the grounds. There are plants and trees from many cold countries as well as spectacular views over the Blue Mountains. We also sat through a video of the Blue Mountains. We had lunch in the picnic area before heading off.

We stopped at Pierces Pass Picnic area and were greeted with more spectacular views over the Blue Mountains. Just out of Lithgow we stopped at the Hartley Historic Village. It was a small town established in the late 1800's but went into decline when Lithgow became the major centre for business and Government for the area. There are still a number of old buildings in fairly good repair. The standout building is the old Court House. It was constructed from sandstone in a Greek style. It has beautiful columns at the front entrance and still appears that it could be used if needed. None of the buildings can be accessed so we could only look through the windows.

We continued back to Lithgow and the girls ordered me to stop at a craft shop on the outskirts. It was raining very heavily and I missed the narrow entrance and had to do the block to get back. As usual, it was full of crafty rubbish and I was bored in one minute. Then we went for a drive through town and found the statue of Marjorie Jackson (The Lithgow Flash) who won a gold medal at the Helsinki Olympic Games in 1952.