To Goulburn

With a heavy head and a wine soaked stomach I set off on the next leg of my adventure. I hated leaving Sydney. It just felt so right to be back. Sometimes you leave a place and you come back years later and it it isn't the same. Coming back to Sydney felt like I'd never left. Its crazy to say it but I loved being in the big crowds, the sense of purpose and energy that they have. The traffic was worse but it always is. I don't know why we country folk complain about Sydney traffic. It is that slow now you can almost walk faster. 

The other thing is the variety. I mean I went from The Upper North Shore to The Shire to The Inner West to The Hills District and finally The Blue Mountains each and every one of them had its own character. Sure there are plenty of homogeneous things if you stick to the big shopping centres but get out of those and its the different types of housing, people doing many and varied jobs and all the great and not so great businesses that abound. You cant keep up with it all you just have to roll with it and deal with whatever presents itself. It is invigorating and intoxicating all at the same time. 

The Don

I headed south along Mulgoa Road from the foot of the Blue Mountains going through Wallacia then Camden and picking up the old Hume Highway into Picton, where I stopped for coffee. Off to Bowral where I revisited the Bradman Museum a great place for the cricket tragics amongst us to gather. I didn't quite manage lunch for some reason and pushed on through to Mittagong and Moss Vale before finally arriving in Goulburn in the late afternoon. 

Now Goulburn is an interesting town. It has a maximum security prison, the NSW Police Academy is in town plus it has a vibrant main street and not much in the way of suburban shopping centres that kill off the character of some many country towns. I was told the town was booked out for this Thursday, apparently it's graduation day for the police cadets. Sadly where I'm staying they'd had a few cancellations. A number of cadets have failed and wont be graduating. Seems they wont be keeping the streets of NSW safe for some time yet. 

I don't think it quite knows how to pitch itself though. In one of the tourist brochures I have it describes itself as being "conveniently located between Sydney and Canberra" as if they put it there for that purpose. Then it tries to dress up what is essentially a pub crawl as a "self guided tour of historic watering holes". You have to love a town that takes it drinking so seriously.

The locals have been friendly and the food has been good. I cant tell you about the drink though all I've had is a tomato juice and a latte coffee - soft!