Day 8: Sydney to Bowral

Parked at Bradman Oval

This day (Wednesday, 20th) we left Sydney—but not before a walk with our host and extracting our motorhome from her backyard via a narrow driveway.

Cricket fans: look closely at these field
placements! This is a mural at the museum.

Before leaving the city we drove to Castle Hill to catch up with an old friend of David’s from uni days. We met him in a historical park called Castle Hill Heritage Park Reserve. We discovered it was the site of a very early government farm the fed the colony. It was established in 1801, only a dozen years after the first white settlers arrived in the country. This was also the site of a convict uprising a couple of years later. "The Castle Hill Rebellion of 1804 was Australia’s first uprising. The rebellion was an attempt by a group of Irish convicts to overthrow British rule in New South Wales and return to Ireland where they could continue to fight for an Irish republic" (from here). Also close by was Australia’s first official institute for people with mental illness, from 1811 to 1826. 

Cricket gnomes

Then we drove towards Canberra, our nation’s capital. But we made a planned stop at a small town that is the birthplace of a famous Australian: Donald Bradman. He’s been called the greatest batsman of all time (that's across all countries). In a game that loves statistics, he’s head and shoulders above the rest, and with a career batting average of 99.94, His career batting average is almost 39 runs higher than the next batsman who has scored more than 2,000 runs.

Our goal was to visit the cricket museum bearing his name. We spent two very enjoyable hours there reading all sorts of things about this game we love. We revelled in taking our time in a way that one can't when one has offspring to also take care of...

After we were done (not long before closing time), we took our time having afternoon tea in the motorhome and then drove 10 minutes down the road to set up at a caravan park, in a town with a great name: Mittagong.

We enjoyed lovely showers and WiFi, along with the sound of trains through the night (though they were across the other side of the road, about 100m away). We're gradually getting used to where everything is in the motorhome, as well as all the little routines that come with a life on the road.