Our first morning here is a a reasonable morning "cold-wise". It's a nice relaxed cooked breakfast for us this morning - since we are not moving on today.
We leave the ute still hitched up to the tvan - deciding to take a walk into and around the town of Hay.
We enjoy the rest of the morning walking around Hay - doing coffee, going to the information centre and visiting the museum at the old railway station.
We are really impressed with this town and find everyone we speak to very very friendly and helpful.
They are really putting a lot of effort into promoting their town - with several museums, great free camps, free bikes to ride around the town and even the local Olympic pool is free (just not open in winter).
There is even a free sausage sizzle in town, for some reason today, and we are delighted to accept a sausage and sauce sandwich for our lunch
We always make an effort to spend a bit of money in the towns in the outback that provide free camps for us travellers. So today yes we had coffee and cake and made a donation to the museum we visit - and we also opt to get some fresh pork chops for dinner tonight (even though we have already plenty of meat frozen in our fridge).
Must be cotton grown around here somewhere - as we see a few trucks coming through town when we are at the coffee shop
The museum display we visited is housed in restored railway carriages at the rear of the old Railway Station.
The display relates to the internment camps that were located here in Hay during WWII - 1940 a 1947.
1,984 internees, German and Austrians, were shipped from Britain arriving in Hay via 4 steam trains of 48 carriages, from Sydney. The three Hay Internment Camps 6, 7 & 8, were paid for by the British Government who had interned all "enemy aliens" by the outbreak of WWI.
HMT Dunera sailed from Liverpool, Britain on 10th July 1940.
The "Dunera Boys" as they became known - were transferred to internment camps in Victoria, in May 1941, to make way for 2000 Italian POW's.
Between September 1940 and July 1946 the three Hay Internment camps house 6200 German, Italian, Japanese, Australian civilian internees and Italian and Japanese POW's
The exhibition is about "Us & Them" -- how the prisoners, the locals and the soldiers saw each other through and beyond the wire. The wire was there to keep town and the camp apart. BUt it could not stop the war encroaching on everyday life in Hay - and sometimes 'enemies' becoming friends.
By the time we get back to our camp - we have walked approx 6km in our explorations today.
I spend some time chatting with our "neighbours" and after a bit of a relax around camp Moores and I set off on a mission to find more firewood.
We found some good pieces down along the riverbank and bythe time we manage to drag them back we are warmed up - and have enough wood to build another nice campfire with the big log that only burnt 1/3 through last night.
It's a lovely sunset for our last night here and the fire is a cracker. it's very cosy sitting by the warmth of the fire and catching up on this blog.
Tomorrow we will be moving on for an overnight stop at Forbes.
No comments:
Post a Comment