We’ve arrived in Griffith this afternoon, still on the lands of the Wiradjuri people.
The day started with a very short trip down the Snowy Mountains Hwy to the next town – Adelong – only 15 minutes away. We ended up spending a lot longer here than we’d planned, because there was just a lot to walk to and see! We started out on the Snowy Valleys Sculpture Trail – Adelong has one of the biggest collections across the Valley, and we set out to see all 14. It was a really nice walk alongside the Adelong Creek, and the sculptures had really interesting stories that we all enjoyed.
We continued down the paths alongside the creek toward the other thing we were keen to see in Adelong – the Adelong Falls Gold Mill Ruins. It was amazing to learn about the history and ingenuity of everything that was built in the 1860s to mine for gold at an industrial scale. It was a decent walk there – and while there was a bit of complaining about how far the walk was, but the kids definitely enjoyed seeing all the ruins and putting pieces together about how it all worked.
Once we made it back to the car and had a bit of morning tea, it was on the road toward our next stop for the day: Narrandera. On our way in, we thought we stumbled on another Big Thing! And we sort of did… but it felt like it was a half effort. It was definitely what it said on the box: a Big Murray Cod. But it was just a big 2D printed fish with the words underneath – no other explanation or even purpose – it was just sitting randomly at the side of the road. We all felt like Swan Hill did a better job (see day 20 of Round Australia).
Narrandera is a decent sized town, right on the Murrumbidgee River. We quickly stopped by their water tank on the way in to have a look at the artwork. We’d really enjoyed spotting lots of silo art when we travelled round Australia, so we thought this was a good addition to that. The water tank supplies all of Narrandera’s town water – it’s connected to a bore near the Murrumbidgee, and the water is pumped up to the tower at the top of town.
We headed back into town and pulled into the big park that sits right beside the information centre for lunch. After a few different sandwiches and other leftovers that we had with us, we headed into the info centre for a quick look around. We asked the lady what else we should see while we were here – her answer was the water tower art (done), the Lake Talbot Skywalk (we were about to go and do that), and koalas – which surprised us! Turns out Narrandera is very proud of how they’ve rehabilitated the koala population in the surrounding area. They have a huge gum tree forrest on the south side of town which has a large population of koalas that has developed from one male and three females that were brought back into the area in the 70s. While we were in the visitors centre, we had a look through their Discovery Centre, which had a great amount of information and history on Narrandera and its surrounding districts, and also a great acknowledgement of the Wiradjuri peoples – including some of the killings and massacres of Wiradjuri people during the late 1800s.
While we were there, we also needed to get a photo with (and have a play of) Narrandera’s Biggest Playable Guitar!
We headed for the Skywalk – a new viewing platform that sits 15m above Lake Talbot. It was definitely an amazing view, and it was lovely to look out over the lake… but that was all there was to it, so it was a bit of a short visit.
We then headed into the bush nearby onto the Koala Walk that was suggested to us. It’s only a short loop, but apparently people had recently seen about 6 koalas on that loop. So we were optimistic! Although after walking about 80% of the loop we were less optimistic, as we hadn’t seen even one. But on the home stretch we spotted two! Fairly close to the edge of the trial. Even if we didn’t see as many koalas as we would’ve liked, it was a beautifully peaceful walk through a gumtree bush.
Our plan from there had been to just head the one hour further into the Riverina region to Griffith – but at the info centre in Narrandera, we’d learnt about the little town of Barellan, only 40 mins or so north. It was where Evonne Goolagong had grown up and developed her tennis skills – and there was a tennis racquet sculpture there in her honour! It only added about 30 mins extra to head via Barellan rather than straight to Griffith, so we decided to do just that. It was not only another Big Thing to add to our list, but it was great to read about (and for the kids to learn a bit about) Evonne Goolagong’s early life there in Barellan. The tennis racquet was a big replica of one of her original Dunlop racquets. Just as we were taking some photos and the kids were playing handball on the mini tennis court there, we realised what the orange glow on the horizon was that we’d seen for the past 30 minutes or so – it was a pretty decent dust storm that enveloped the town! We quickly rushed back to the car trying to avoid getting dust in our eyes and through the car, and headed off toward Griffith.
It’s been a quiet evening in Griffith. I headed into Woolies to grab a few things that we were running low on, and we decided that clearing out the local sushi shop of their rolls would be a delicious dinner – and thankfully cheaper than another pub dinner. (Looking forward to our next Airbnb in Broken Hill when we can cook a meal for dinner again!)
