Yackety Yack, Day 10 – Cudal & Cold

Day 10 Thursday 18/5/2023, Grenfell to Orange, overcast 4 – 10 Brrr

Woody walks over to Spannerman to buy coffee and they give him a cappuccino instead of a long black. He’s blowing steam out his ears when a car zooms into the park. It’s the lady from Spannerman with his long black and profuse apologies. Now that’s service!

We take the Mid Western Highway up towards Cowra. This is all sheep farms and golden poplars line the road. Cowra is too busy for us to even consider looking for parking spaces, so we push on then, whoops we miss the turnoff to the B81 and the GPS sends us down a closed street. Extricating ourselves we push on to Canowindra (pronounced Ca noun dra). Little lambs are up to their bellies in green grass. We pull up for a walk around the town and notice that the caravan picnic table is down (and was probably flapping) …and none of us noticed! Walking the dogs along the historic Main Street it’s noticeable that this is a popular town. There are some tempting shops and one of the hotels is undergoing a facelift.

Back on the road, there’s evidence of the floods, and the road to Orange is marked with a warning sign, we decide to take the longer route through the village of Cudal. A road that is also lined with woolly sheep. We gradually climb from an altitude of 410 metres up to 863 metres no wonder it’s cold.

Although we’re in the lead, we miss a turn in Orange and find ourselves the last to arrive at the Colour City Caravan Park, crikey, Mrs. Have a Chat beat us! It feels odd being in a city again and it feels so busy.

After lunch, Woody walks into town and I drive in a little later and pick him up. Walking around the CBD I meet Maria Walsh, an artist who is installing a tactile ceramic work on a laneway wall. Orange is the 13th largest town in NSW with a population of approx. 39,000 (2023 http://www.population.net.au). The city is a celebration of deciduous trees and we couldn’t be here at a better time. Reds, yellows, and browns and drifts of leaves on footpaths. The heart of town has many grand buildings and in the surrounding area, there has been a gradual transition from orchards to vineyards. With its cool climate, the town has become desirable and there’s a push to get the Sydney Bathurst bullet train extended out to Orange.