"Chocolate, cricket and some more trains" Newtripper's photos around Junee, Australia

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• published: 20 Feb 2011
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Preview of Newtripper's blog at TravelPod. Read the full blog here: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/newtripper/sth_nsw/1183422060/tpod.html This blog preview was made by TravelPod using the TripAdvisor™ TripWow slideshow creator. Entry from: Junee, Australia Entry Title: "Chocolate, cricket and some more trains" Entry: "Monday was work day - Ted to have his hair cut, and I to do some shopping. Went to the Post Office and picked up the mail - bills to be paid. Also the supermarket shopping for the next few days meals, Ted's prescriptions and I visited the Antique shops which were open today but which had been closed yesterday. I have to say that Wagga's idea of an Antique shop is not mine - all of them were really gift shops with little older stuff. Following the shopping and lunch we headed off to see the RAAF Museum near the airport here - Closed for Refurbishment. So back into town and spent a bit of time doing some emails, loading some photos to the blog and attempting to pay some bills, but to no avail, so back to the post office to pay over the counter, for which AMEX will charge me $2 "over the counter" fee. Grouse. Back to the van and eventually cooked a frittata for dinner after watching ABC's talking heads. Rained most of the night, but nothing came inside like it did in Traralgon last month. Tuesday Today we set off for Junee to see the largest Roundhouse in the country - a roundhouse is where they store locos all on outward radiating sets of rails (in this case, 42 sets). In the middle is a turntable to enable the locos to get in and out. Here also is a railway museum. We arrived in Junee at about 10am to find that they have changed the hours from 9:30am to 12 noon. So we decided to move on to Cootamundra to see Bradman's birthplace. However, we decided to call ahead to make sure it was also not closed, but the phone number in the RACV book indicated that the phone number was disconnected. This was not a good note to start out on a 100km round trip just in the hope that the Bradman's birthplace was open today (as indicated in the book). Cootamundra is another 52 km on, and apart from stopping to photograph a down freight just outside Illabo, we reached Cootamundra and followed the signs to Bradman's birthplace until they ceased, and we found ourselves at another place I had wanted to see and that was the Captain's Walk - in a nice park, they had bronze busts of about 15 Australian cricket captains - quite interesting. After that, and consulting the map, we found the Bradman house, and it was indeed worth coming to see for a cricket fan. Lots of Bradman memorabilia, photos and information. The volunteer who was on duty was rather loquacious - talked about everything under the sun except Bradman, when I would have liked to read the stuff about Bradman, but finally he went away. We finished there after about an hour, and headed back toward Junee. I figured out that the down xpt was probably not all that far behind us, and the road basically follows the road all the way. So we stopped in Illabo for lunch, but no xpt appeared. We were about the leave when it appears, and we took the required photographed with the train loomed over by huge wheat silos. Back in Junee, we found the up xpt in the 2nd road letting the down xpt through, and we were held up at the crossing with the boom gates down whilst the up xpt drew out of the station, and then reversed back into road 1 and into the platform. We headed directly then to the Roundhouse museum where we were able to get on to a guided tour. Fred, our guide was an old railway man, and had heaps of stories about all sort of things as he showed us the roundhouse, the restored carriages, and he was particularly proud of the mail car that had been his own project in the museum, and I have to say, he had done an excellent job re-creating the things that the mail cars did - he had old, actual sorting equipment in it, and at each end, an old mail cart. We spent about 1 ½ hours in there seeing stuff and listening to the old stories. After that, we headed for the licorice and chocolate factory, where we had a guided tour, and made ourselves a giant chocolate freckle. Bought some chocolate coated licorice and also sunmuscats - first chocolate since we left home!! By this time it was almost 4pm so we headed back to the van, where after some fun with the electricity, I cooked chops and veg, and then we watched some videos (whilst I am writing this). It again rained all ..." Read and see more at: http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/newtripper/sth_nsw/1183422060/tpod.html Photos from this trip: 1. "Bradmans birthplace" 2. "Captains Walk" 3. "Roundhouse" 4. "The house" 5. "XPT and Ilabo" See this TripWow and more at http://tripwow.tripadvisor.com/tripwow/ta-00d3-aaf6-6fe0?ytv4=1