Tuesday 5th August. Gold in Gulgong

We have been blessed with good weather so far and it continued today. Our destination today was a little town which we haven’t visited before called Gulgong. We drove to West Wyalong stopping there for a coffee. While having coffee I read a tourist information booklet about the town and made a mental note that it would be a great little place to stay as there was lots of interesting history for me and it had a golf course for Rob.J From West Wyalong we started to take some of the backroads to reach Gulgong. They were fairly quiet and not in too bad a condition. Wayside pull-over stops were few and far between but we were able to find a lovely place to pull over, next to a paddock. In the paddock we could see some hay but nothing else. After about five minutes, we noticed a group of cattle had joined us for lunch, munching away on the hay. Following lunch we drove on, heading through the town of Wellington, which we have visited in the past, we could not believe our eyes. Obviously, we had not travelled on this particular road before because we saw, fields and fields of solar panels. The rolling hills were covered with them. We are so used to seeing cropping or animals grazing, not huge solar farms. I looked it up to find out that it is on 560 hectares and approximately 440,000 solar panels are used. Arriving at our destination of Gulgong, we quickly set up and headed into town. Gulgong is a lovely historic town which now has a population of about 2,500 people but in the 1870’s it was up to 20,000. It was a gold mining town and a busy place for a number of years. There are many beautiful old buildings, including “The Prince of Wales Opera House”, which had a fascinating history. We enjoyed strolling along the busy but narrow streets of the town and a visit to a gold mining display located just out of the main part of town. The main employer of the town now, is a coal mine which we will drive past tomorrow.