Armidale is a great country town with very good schools and lots of heritage buildings all built in the mid 1800’s. There are several large private boarding schools and a large Uni complex (UNE). One of the girls boarding schools NEGS allows students to bring their horse to board as they have a large equestrian complex. The tourist information centre runs a free heritage bus tour which was a great look at all the significant heritage buildings. We drove around the next day for photos and heard the cathedral bells practicing. Next day we joined two of the recommended tourist drives and visited Uralla, Dangar Falls, and Saumarez Homestead. Uralla is another town full of old buildings and the grave of the bushranger Thunderbolt. The museum holds a series of paintings depicting Thunderbolts holdups and arrest. They are excellent paintings and are worth the visit to the museum alone. The rest of the display is also good and contains some great artefacts from the gold rush days. Dangar Falls drops 170m from the sheep country into deep fractured gorges. While not pretty the faulted mountains are impressive. In between these two well known sites is an old sheep station and church well worth a visit. The sheep station is Deeargee (DRG) and has a huge octagonal sheep shed that stands out of the plains. The nearby church is located in the middle of a 3 way road junction. Each of the 3 roads are lined by huge elm trees and the 1800’s church has its ends covered in ivy. It is very picturesque.
Saumarez Homestead is a station homestead that has been handed over to the National Trust and is now opened to the public by volunteers. The homestead was built for a family and the servants, extended to two floors when the original was no longer deemed impressive enough and ended up the home of two unmarried sisters. When the last sister died the decendants invited the Nat Trust to take it over. The house has been left untouched with clothes in the wardrobes, jams in the kitchen and all furniture and effects in place. It was a great tour and the gardens are also very impressive as is the attached farm buildings and old horse drawn machinery. Once again a long tree lined driveway makes a great entrance avenue. The Pembroke Tourist Village is an excellent park with big grassed sites, new amenities, and a choose your own site policy. We were sharing the park with heaps of over 60’s cricketers in town for the Australian over 60 Championships.
Early in the week we headed further south and stopped at Tamworth to get info on the Country Music Festival program and booked the shows we wanted. We overnighted at Scone and I would recommend not to. The mining industry is booming at accommodation is filled by workers. We intended to stay at Lake Glenbaun but it was booked out.
We moved straight on to Paterson which is a small town a few km’s north of Maitland and where Peter, Carols brother, lives on a 7 acre block. It started raining during the night at Scone and has rained non-stop for the last 4 days accompanied by cold temperatures. Intended giving Peter a hand with some building work but the rain has limited us except for today when we went into Newcastle to help Jackie move some furniture out of her current house. Jackie is moving to Sydney after a US holiday at the end of the year – lucky girl.
Carol has received her Xmas present a bit early and has flown up to CQ to see Kirsty and Ben’s girls first dancing concert. She hopes to catch up with Fabs and Brendan and Michelle and their boys.
Whites house at UNE
One of many old Armidale pubs
C of E with excellent bells
Catholic Church
Another Church
Little church out among the once rich sheep stations
Octagonal shearing shed - 3 levels of glass windows
Dangar Falls
Saumarez House
Entry drive after a mile avenue of huge pine and elm trees.
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