17 July 2016: The eighth wonder of the world and other delights

I rose early to ensure that I had capture the delights of yesterday’s misadventures. I had decided inwardly that I would not, or more accurately could not, face breakfast in the Tanwarra Lodge bistro. The G had said that breakfast was included in our nightly fee; this conjured up pictures of farm-fresh eggs (whatever they are) with freshly-cured bacon and perhaps a fine Cumberland sausage. You know the sort of thing. But I was quickly disabused when she muttered the word “continental”.

I knew that it would be wrong for me to conjure pictures of freshly squeezed orange juice and golden croissants with a steaming bowl of that café au lait that only the French can make (and possibly only ever make in my memory or made 40 years ago when I ran wild in France). I knew instinctively that this Tanwarra Lodge breakfast would be continental in name alone and in every other way would be an insult to the continent. The only thing that worries me about Brexit is that it gives the breakfast pirates a further excuse to insult the French. Not of course that insulting the French is a bad thing, after all the English have been doing it for a thousand years, but because many of these British habits find their way to Australia.

Breakfast was as bad as I feared. It ranked possibly with a breakfast that I had been offered at the Miners’ Retreat Motel in Ballarat. I do not to infer any further comparison between Tanwarra Lodge and the Miners’ Retreat (the omitted the policy but I include it because it is as close to bearing my backside to the proprietors as I can get). The Miners’ Retreat Motel is possibly the worst accommodation in the Southern Hemisphere and would be well up the rakings in the Northern Hemisphere.

The following were the sins committed against the gourmand:

1. Cereal in small packets (I looked at one of these and I was staggered to see instructions on the bottom of the box described how to eat this without taking the cereal out of the box (and yet still adding milk). I use the word “cereal” with some trepidation as in most cases the contents of these boxes look more like a combination of cut-up cardboard and leaf sweepings. My Father used to eat something called Shredded Wheat, possibly at the direction of my Mother, and he would invariably refer to it as “shredded cardboard. My Father knew shit.) 
2. Fruit in a sealed plastic pot (it was orange but goodness only knows what it was)
3. Butter and jam in sachet things (the butter was probably OK but the jam in those things would be as closely related to the jam I bought in Taralga as I am related to a marmoset)
4. Toast in a pile (i.e laid horizontally each piece on the top the other rather than vertically in a toast rack

The offending cereal with instructions (right) for those too lazy to empty the contents into a bowl

I was refused permission by The G not attend this breakfast so I rebelled by taking nothing but a glass of water. I was staggered when The G took the coffee that was offered. As it turned out she was impressed and found it to be good. I think that the Tanwarra Lodge elves had got to her in the night and turned her brain. I ended up having a coffee free day which probably did me a world of good.

We had decided that we would go to a place called Hill End where there is a museum celebrating, or at least commemorating, the exploits of the gold miners and others who contributed to the mini-economic boom at that particular place.

The high road between Sofala and Hill End (it goes all the way to Mudgee as we discovered) is a very pleasant and twisty drive. There are satisfactory curves and hills that would have been a delight to tackle in the TVR. Only a couple of miles after we set off we were confronted by some rock formations that were nothing short of spectacular. We stopped to take a photograph and across the road was a sign on a fence that adjured the visitor that fossicking was not permitted. I have always thought that fossicking was a slightly unsavoury activity and I am somewhat surprised that Moses was not inspired to include an eleventh commandment in respect of its perils.

Stunning views. I just wish I was a decent photographer

Dire warnings  

What stores could this old place tell?

 We drove on by windy roads through fairly typical Australian scrub (much of which had been cleared at some time I thought) and then we reached the History Hill Museum. As it turned (everyone else knew this but not me) it was not the Hill End Museum but it was a wondrous thing. A sign at the entrance warned us that that we would be paying $10 for the privilege of whatever feast was in store We drove up past what looked like a genuine gold mine entrance to a rambling array of buildings covered with hand-written signs exhorting us to not do certain activities.

A mine entrance. Possibly genuine but probably not. Our friend Gazza from Tanwarra Lodge did the lighting.  Terry walked all the way to the end of the tunnel.

My favourite sign read as follows “Children must not throw stones, run litter climb on displays and play with quartz.” The punctuation here leaves something to be desired but was a foretaste of the grammatical experience to come (though Tanwarra lodge which sports the phrase “Richard’s’ Hill” perhaps takes the punctuation biscuit). It is the logical interpretation that gets me. First, if I am not a child I can do any of the things in the list. More interestingly, so long as I am not playing with quartz I can do any of the other things in the list. He should have used “or” rather than “and”. There are some benefits of being a mathematician who has done a logic course.

Children must not throw stones, run litter climb on displays and play with quartz. A logically flawed sentence

We paid our ten dollars and I immediately discerned that the proprietor of this emporium was not a man of few words. Knowing that The G would get caught in possibly interminable stories of life the universe and everything I resolved to keep a safe distance. I could hear the proprietor waxing lyrical about the disasters of his early life and why the Greek empire had failed but I did not have to stand idly by while trying to look as if I were listening.

The emporium itself was a veritable Aladdin’s Cave. It could not really be called a museum because the word museum implies that there has been curation of artefacts. Curation involves selection and there had been no selection. This man, our proprietor, was a frenzied acquirer of anything that might be about gold mining or which might relate to it in the most indirect manner. I did not know before today what is a Ballarat pick. I do now; I have seen possibly 250 and all in a pile. There were fascinating signs (some of them grammatically correct); one of read “Rare glue pot (now stolen)”. Beneath was an empty space.

Eventually we saw the brochure for the place and it was perfect. Our proprietor had clearly designed it as had a number of photographs and he was determined to pack as many of the into this brochure as he could. And he succeeded.

I did learn stuff about mining though; you could not help but do so. I will not list all I learned here but a poster from the Mines Inspection Act 1901 which listed the signal codes for Winding Engines was interesting as it was based on a variant of base 5 arithmetic but one where there is no 10. Work it out yourself and then enjoy a reverie as you work out how alert a listener needed to be to hear the difference between levels 19 and 20.

I enjoyed the peculiar mathematics behind the Mines Inspection Act (1901)

We spent a good two hours or more at this place before we headed on to Hill End properly. I was a bit confused about what was and what was not Hill End but my confused was resolved when we arrived at one of those Visitor Information places. The G had told me that Hill End was derelict in the 1960s but that it had been preserved. A sign at the Visitor Information centre revealed fascinating insights. There was a picture of Hill end in 1872 showing a sprawling town and some substance. As we drove around the town (now a village) one could get the impression of how large it was. Much archaeological work has been done to determine exactly what was where. Hill End is a town where 9 in every ten buildings has been erased. Each erased building is represented by a plaque that provides some information about what was there.

Moores Lane at Hill End. We get everywhere we Moores

We lunched at the the somewhat ambitiously named Royal Hotel which advertised an equally ambitiously described bistro. There were too many chips and sausages on offer my delicate constitution so I passed on lunch.

Hill End was the sort of pastoral history that appeals to me. You can get the sense of what the place used to be like even though, as The G pointed out, many of the dwellings would have been tents. There were 28 public hostelries (though I learned that there were 38 in Sofala which now has a population of 75). It’s thirsty work mining but these places must have been tough. I learned while reading a history (I should say an history) of Sofala that there was theft and there was a police force but most crimes were dealt with “independently”.

We had decided that we need to “do” a winery and we had selected for this purpose a cool climate winery (well it would have to be cool climate in this region) called Burnbrae. I had thought this was but a few kays further along than Hill End itself but it proved to be a good deal further. Nonetheless we found it and checked to sample a few of the products. We came away with a couple of bottles of a rather nice cuvée (sparkling white), a couple of bottles of the 2014 Shiraz (very young, will need to cellar for 3 or 4 years) and a couple of bottles of a nice rosé. We also picked up a bottle of their tawny port which was rather nice and some chocolate and pistachios. We had, therefore, a retail experience.

The front gates

We had decided that a second night in the Tanwarra bistro was more than a soul could take so as we headed back we swung past Mudgee. I had never been to Mudgee but nonetheless I entered the Woolworths there to collect some provisions for a light repast in our quarters. I do not like going into Woollies as they are the enemy of the small farmer. The road back to Sofala took us to Ilford where we were to turn right. Ilford was signposted for miles and we had great expectations of a major conurbation and, not unimportantly, a gas station. We were disappointed: there were two houses and ruin.

The Sofala High Road is a pleasant drive and we checked into the Sofala Royal Arms for a cleansing ale. It was everything that a bush pub should be. It was full of locals watching the Eels crushing the Panthers. At the back was a small group whose vocabulary seemed to consist entirely of the word “fuck” and its derivatives. It reminded me of a book by Paul Fussel (I cannot remember what it was called but it was about WW2) and in it he recalls someone looking at an aircraft engine and commenting that “the fucking fucker’s fucked.” That was the level of conversation. Fascinating.

The pub. We were told that a man called Wobbly lives in the corner of the bar

We retreated to the Tanwarra Lodge where the rest of the evening passed uneventfully. I was in bed at silly o’clock.