Another day of Adventure! 28^th November 2014

Muswellbrook to Lithgow

We got an early start for a change and drove out of Muswellbrook and headed south west passing some very large working open-cast mines. We eventually met the Golden Highway going northwest passing over the famous Hunter River.  We turned off in Sandy Hollow onto the “Bylong Valley Highway”, which on many maps shows parts of it as a dirt track.  However, the internet had it as a sealed road so we thought we were on safe ground, although we always had the backup of the 4WD.

The road was in fact very good and looked as if it had recently been surfaced, although not particularly wide. I was even more convinced that it would be fine when two large juggernauts came thundering down the road in the opposite direction. Despite my confidence our satnav system wasn’t convinced and kept on trying to make us make a U-turn, so we eventually turned it off.  

Bylong Valley Way

The valley was very peaceful and provided a pleasant morning drive, passing through the Wollemi National Park. The road also followed a rail track for part of the way and we spotted a coal train pulling 500m length of trucks and got a friendly wave from the driver as I took his photograph. The route passed a number of horse stud farms and one winery but being so early in the morning I thought it was a tad early to start sampling wine! 

We surfaced on what looked like a “main” road just past Breakfast Creek near Rylstone, although still on the Bylong Valley Road.  

.. lots of friends or big on Amazon?

We stopped to take a look at an information boards about Mudgee, which was back up the road, where some 38 wineries were located, but unfortunately ended up with loads of flies in the car.  A few miles down the road and in my haste to flick a fly off my eye-lid I accidently caught my glasses and they got thrown backwards. We stopped to look for them in the car without success at which point I had the sickening feeling that, being so light, they had been flung out of the window.  I walked down the road a few hundred yards but couldn’t see them anywhere so went back to the car to recheck and found them in the boot!  

We then tried to start the car but it refused and it looked as though the battery was dead, even though the radio and fan worked.  We were in the middle of nowhere, without telecom signal nor any nearby houses. We managed to enlist the help of another car driver who had stopped.  Fortunately, he had a portable battery pack to get the car started (what are the odds of that!!!). We then drove to the nearest petrol station, come general store and cafe, in Capertee, a village with about a half dozen houses, some 9km away and using their landline called the car recovery service. We had to waited 2 hours to get the problem resolved, eventually driving into Lithgow.

Two hours wasted but locals were friendly!

I have been struggling for the last two days getting Google maps to work on my Samsung phone. I keep on getting a message that implies that someone may be trying to compromise my phone. I have absolutely no problem with my Nexus so at dinner tonight I asked a group of young lads with their dads, all the lads probably being under 12. Well they thought they knew the answer but didn’t.  However, one of the fathers suggested checking the time zone. Sure enough I was still on QLD time and this was enough to invalidate the Google certificate.

At dinner I tried a Cabinet Sauvignon wine called Tamburlaine from Orange NSW, absolutely brilliant and well worth seeking out.