Bathurst or Orange to Canberra: any suggestions?

[Billscott]

Bored with the idea of riding the direct route from Sydney to Canberra to visit the relatives, we thought we might take a train across the mountains and ride to Canberra from Bathurst or Orange.

We'd be staying in pubs so we'd have to plan legs from town to town.

Has anyone in the forum done this? Any suggestions?

[twowheels]

I've only done the reverse trip by car from Canberra to Cowra, then via Bathurst/Orange to Sydney. Really nice country from Canberra > Cowra > Bathurst/Orange. Cool military/transport museum outside Cowra. Nice bakeries in the towns on this route also.

[Wollemi]

What is so 'cool' about a military museum? Do you appreciate Iraq body counts also? But Canberra has long promoted the War 'Memorial' as a tourist drawcard. It is, literally, a bloody museum that eases you through a semblance of a distant hell via the cafe and gift-shop at the other extremity. See the smart mannequins dressed in Imperial officers uniforms! See the action of the brave men running over foreign hills! So strong to carry such a large gun whilst dressed in tweed! I never knew a bayonet was really that long!

Any war memorial is a cop-out by apologists-in-hindsight, ie., Civic leaders and politicians, to the naive cannon-fodder who simply took a chance to see some of the world when the vast majority would never be able to afford so, in addition to escaping from the day-to-day work of working fields or shuffling papers. WWII was another matter, yet modesty is the key to forgiveness and education - such as PoW graveyards scattered across the country and plaques at localised true memorials in small towns and suburbs everywhere. Then names externally chiselled on obelisks in Bathurst and Orange are repeated on internal granite walls in Canberra. Why?

And before you flame me, why should I care that your own great grand-father fought in the Great War? You and I alike never knew him. Additionally, many - from Lawrence of Arabia as advisor to cabinet minister Churchill to Somme veteran Ted Smout frequently queried the value of the glorification of war. Look at the setting of the Australian War Memorial located beneath Mt Ainslie and back from Lake Griffith - glorious!

As you cycle through forgotten localities (Lowther Siding, Black Springs,
Grabben Gullen, come to mind), you'll pass many etched obelisks without stopping to imagine that a village died off here because no men returned to work the immediate area. Yet you will step into perceived hallowed halls to read about these very people at the 'Meeting Place'. More likely drawn in by the subconscious thought of an expresso.


Carcoar is very much worth visiting. If you can't be fussed with pre-booking and boxing your bicycle, do consider riding the regular inter-urban train to Mt Vic, then peddling - (Jenolan Caves) - Oberon - Trunkey Creek - Tuena - Crookwell - Gunning - Gundaroo, then enter the ACT at the Gungarlin end or via Queanbeyan. I have cycled variants of this route over 4.5 days on four occasions. The walk up to the summit of Evans Crown just near the village of Tarana is worthwhile.

[twowheels]

And before you flame me.