Canowindra surroundings: Canowindra, AUSTRALIA

These are a batch of photos from a recent tour to the regional Australian town of Canowindra. Now, there are many towns in Australia that have confusingly spelled names that often sound NOTHING like they sound! Canowindra is a case in point... it is pronounced Ka-nown-dra. For #$@%@$#% sakes, why the hell didn't they name it Canoundra?!?!?... Weirdly enough, there is also traces historically and in local landmarks where it IS spelled Canoundra.

Anyway, it is an historic town that derives its name from the local Aboriginal word for "home". It was an important regional centre during the colonial history of Australia, and has a relatively famous and protected main street. Although, when I was walking down the main street, it was quite clear that there was some significant damage due to the recent years of heavy rains and high water marks.

But anyway, this post is more about the surrounding areas of Canowindra... when we were leaving the town, we took some time to walk out and explore a bit of the river from a small timber footbridge.

Although it hadn't really rained that much in the days previously, you can see that the water was still quite high in the river.

... and moving quite fast under the bridge.

I suspect that this particular bridge was a way of moving small livestock and goods across the water from the outlying homesteads and farms into the main town centre. Further down the river, there is the modern vehicle bridge, that supports a two lane road. But we thought that it would be more scenic to view the river from this smaller footbridge.... plus, we wouldn't have cars whizzing past at 80 kilometres per hour just a few scant metres away!

Hehe... we were definitely loitering a little bit!

These muddy patches are a bit of a common sight in inland NSW at the moment. The past year of heavy rain with very little let up in the downpours, the heavy clay earth of the NSW region gets quite waterlogged and you end up with these muddy patches that don't dry out easily. This is also a big problem in the residential areas (we are battling a bit with it in our garden).... and the waterlogged clay earth expands and contracts quite differently to the dry version, which can cause foundation problems for houses. Plus, the wet waterlogged earth isn't quite a strong for holding trees in place, and when coupled with strong winds, it has made for quite a number of fallen trees!

Next stop on the way out of Canowindra was a little boutique winery that was sponsoring the festival that we had just played at. There was an invitation to come and try some wines (I was driving, so I had to pass...) and to buy a few bottles at a discount!

Honestly, I would be quite happy living up here! On the other hand, it is a hard life on the country... lots of physical work, and I'm not sure that that is really my sort of thing! But... very beautiful!