Around NSW With Andrew: Bellingen

Gateway To The Hippie North

It's been many a year since I followed the Waterfall Way down from Armidale to the coast. As will be revealed in some following entries for this blog, when we touch upon Ebor, Dorrigo and Coffs Harbour the route taken off the New England tablelands leaving due east of my old uni home town is one I've not taken lightly, nor recently. And so it is arguable that my so-called insights into Bellingen are about as useful as a hip pocket on a singlet. Still, I want to mark my passage through this town and show it as much respect as my minimal travelogue talents can offer:


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Bellingen has been in the news recently for its periodic bouts of flooding, and having passed through town several times I can vouch for the vulnerability to big rains. However it's not so much the roaring tumults of water that drench you when you come into Bellingen, it's the Mother Earth new age sensitivities of many a recent Belligenite that you soak in. Like a southern suburb of Nimbin there is a noticeable hippie-esque quality to the town.

Now there's nowt wrong with this per se. However I am fascinated by how in an area which was once salt of the earth, Country Party voting, lumber felling and dairy cow raising countryside the introduction of Zen, Gaia worship and reflexology has landed here. You don't see Bellingen's social mix replicated down in the Riverina, or west of the Blue Mountains. Whatever is in the Bellinger River is obviously further up stream at Byron, at Mullumbimby.

Aside from the Haight-Ashbury near Coffs aspect to the town the most important experience you can have in Bellingen is coming to a stop after coming down the winding turns of the Dorrigo road, or preparing yourself for the ascent. I've done this both ways in army buses and 76 Corollas, ex-cop cars and a Camry laden down for a naughty weekend. Your brakes may smoke a little on the descent if you're too eager, or perhaps if careless a huge gash may appear in a sheet of sparks on the side of your vehicle. In fact the road off the tablelands into Bellingen is much like the Snowy as it winds its way up from Bega to Cooma. So be careful folks; it ain't an easy road to swan along on.

Sad to say, with my recent travels keeping me on the Pacific or the Newie as I head north, I've had no reason to detour down the Waterfall Way and revisit Bellingen. I'm sure it is a hedonistic bucolic town with enough dampness to make a Chux superwipe happy. So in conclusion, who knows if and when I'll be back.
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Around NSW With Andrew: Albion Park & Shellharbour

Of Railways, Airports and Shellharbour

When you head south of the mighty Illawarra city of Wollongong you are effectively stuck on the Princes Highway, which will in turn meander all the way down to the Victorian border and then some. A scant 15 minutes in this direction from the old home of Aunty Jack you'll find two semi-suburban out crops of the 'Gong; Albion Park and Shellharbour.

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Albion Park has all the raw industrial ugliness on the coastal side as you head south, with car yards, fast food complexes, petrol stations and some smaller shops, with the regional airport on your right. There is a museum there for aviation buffs however unlike so many similar set ups in other country towns I've yet to call on that facility (though the Lockheed Constellation which forms a centrepiece of that collection is usually to be seen out on the tarmac).

However Albion Park isn't just a train station, tacky roadside facilities and a combined airport/museum. It is also a growing way-outer suburban centre, with a massive increase in development since the days I used to pass through here on the way to Kiama. Like Topsy it has grown, and the road to Jamberoo is dotted hither and yon with new housing cheek-by-jowl to old rural plots. I guess urban sprawl had to encroach upon the Illawarra, but it is still surprising to see it so at Albion Park.

Taking a right hander as you head south, by going over the railway line you end up in Shellharbour. Now Shellharbour has all the delights you can expect from a major new growth centre built around young families and retirees. The library there is a pleasant one (he says from occupational experience) and there is a sizeable amount of shopping facilities. However whilst I was able to secure a St George Illawarra NRL jersey for the league season just gone, sad to say Shellharbour has NO fridge magnets. Well, none that I could scare up. If anyone knows where and how to secure such an item please let your correspondent know by comment or message.

Like so much of the south coast below the Gong there are rolling hills, sweeping vistas of the sea and a strange mixture of old diary paddocks and huge residential developments. Shellharbour has been blighted recently by some serious road works around its interchange with the Princes Highway. However this has been mostly resolved, and as it's about 2 hours south of Sydney I am sure many a day tripper could find an excuse to get down there.

So, next time you're driving down to Nowra, or maybe further south, slow down as you hit Albion Park and Shellharbour. Like Hadrian's Wall this is where an empire (i.e. Wollongong) stages its last frontier. Beyond these two locations is the real South Coast.

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Around NSW With Andrew: Cessnock

Hunter Valley Humdrummery

I've had a long and varied history of ambivalent feelings to the town of Cessnock since I was 7 years old, and I don't expect that attitude to change in the short or long run. It's not that Cessnock and Cessnockians in general have done anything to earn my ennui (or even distaste), and I'm sure they would be unhappy with me for offering any criticisms (justified or not) of their town. Yet since the day when the Cessnock Goannas defeated the Maitland Pumpkin Pickers in the 1972 Hunter Valley rigby league grand final me Cessnock and I really just don't get along that well.


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Now Cessnock is not a pretty town, and I guess it's unfair to blame the local architecture for the lingering antipathy I harbour against the place. Yet when it is compared with near Hunter neighbours such as Singleton, Scone or even 'big brother' Maitland the influence of the coal mining history of Cessnock has given (to my mind) the town a rather sombre, depressed and unwelcoming feel. Small homes with narrow, badly maintained streets give you plenty of encouragement to keep driving if your passing through. The main street (Vincent Street) looks sadly dated and down at heel, and the shopping complexes facing Wollombi Road also have an air of quiet desperation about them.

But these comments need to be tempered with the reflection that Cessnock has had it far tougher over the years than the likes of Singleton (which had farming and the army to help out economically). The Hunter Valley wineries which dot the surrounding areas of Cessnock no doubt provide a second income stream to the town, but Cessnock was shaped for many a year by the demands of men mining coal first. This can be seen up the Branxton Road with the memorial to the Rothbury mine riot of 1929.

This actually provides a half-decent segue for my next issue with Cessnock; the road between there and New England Highway. For years I have diverted off the more developed route that takes you past Maitland and over the Hunter River near Hexham, instead travelling through townships such as Freeman's Waterhole, Mulbring, Kearsley and Abedare to the south of Cessnock, and Nulkaba and Rothbury to the north heading towards Branxton. For I don't know how many times I've travelled this stretch and it would be fair to say it has been a badly maintained, horridly uninteresting and rather unattractive diversion. I do have one exception in that the Kearsley pub looks like a stand out of rural drinking holes, but when you're on the road heading north or south through Cessnock be prepared for a fairly unrewarding experience. And by the way, the same cavalier approach to road maintenance exists on the Cessnock-Bellbird-Wollombi road to the west.

If this all sounds like a rant against one town I have to temper it with a high commendation to one tourist feature of Cessnock. The Potters Hotel and Brewery has a reasonable gastropub feel to its bistro and a delightful Kolsch style beer made on site which raised a few smiles for me on a couple of instances. It's a pleasant dining and drinking experience and I would happily stop there again.

As for the Hunter Valley wineries which dot the landscape around Cessnock I can't comment on them either as a whole or individually because I've never taken the opportunity of spending more than a passing sip or two in their vineyards, bodegas and tasting sheds. The local tourism info centre (north of Nulkaba) has a plethora of material about the Cessnock area and its wines and it's actually a decent resource for the traveller. However it's not an ends to the journey itself.

Finally a word about the fridge magnet art available at Cessnock. As you might assume wine takes a central role in this, the most kitschy of traveller's accoutrement:
I'd rather have picked up one of those stylish drawing/impressionistic caricatures of Cessnock's cityscape but sad to say I don't think such a vision exists. It does the job however, which perhaps can be a fitting coda for cessnock in itself. Travelling through the Hunter Valley? Cessnock: it does the job.
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Around NSW With Andrew: Central Colo

Jewel Of The Southern Putty

When one travels the back roads and by-ways of NSW, there are untold numbers of small villages that dot the landscape offering rest and succour as you travel to the next big town. You usually have to slow down to 80 kmph, there's perhaps a derelict servo or a cafe/pub/general store with dilapidated fixtures, a public phone booth and a few hold out properties. Sometimes, as in Freeman's Waterhole with it's Oak Dairy cafe and service station life still pulses at a goodly beat. Sad to say the last time I drove through Central Colo it was fenced off and as vibrant as a Taliban keg-party.


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Now as the above map shows Central Colo lies east of Upper Colo, south of Colo Heights and north of Colo. You could say that Central Colo is part of a veritable plethora of Colos. Lying beside the Putty Road and near the upper reaches of the Hawkesbury River Central Colo for years was a place I'd drive past as I wended my way between Singleton and Richmond. Sited in a valley at the bottom of a reasonably tortuous and winding stretch of the Putty it was not a place to stop at during my passages. Too close to home for first stop on the way north or last stop on the way south, it and its near neighbour Colo Heights presaged civilisation on the Putty.

The Putty Road has almost legendary status for me, partly because of the amount of times I've driven it, partly because of what has happened on it, but mostly because it is one of the most isolated stretches of arterial road in regional NSW. With switch backs, hill climbs, long flat rough as buggery stretches, national parks, state forests and jungle-covered creeks the Putty challenges all and sundry who drive it. It can be dangerous even when taken in the best of circumstances, and if you have mechanical problems then be prepared for a long wait. Hence the importance of Colo Central which may well have sadly passed. It was at the southern end like the coastal village in "Heart of Darkness". Once you went past Central Colo you were in the unknown (until you hit Bulga).

From memory Central Colo also had a fairly vibrant holiday/caravan park. Yet when I motored past that same location about 8 months ago wire fencing and no entry signs had separated the recreational facilities from public access and I felt like I was seeing a tourist ghost town. It may well have been revived since then; I hope so. Perhaps Colo Heights is now the epicentre of everything 'Colo-esque' on the Putty. Be that as it may, as long as there is a driver willing to take the road less travelled from the Hawkesbury to the Hunter the sights, smells and sounds of Central Colo will metaphysically cry out "This is the Putty: Abandon ye hope all who enter here".
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