Today’s travel takes us to Cowra and on to our AirBnB in a little town, King’s Plains, approximately 50 minutes away.
We had breakfast, packed up the car and headed off at about 8:30 First stop was to top up the fuel tank then head to Cowra, where we wanted to see the Japanese Prisoner of War Camp, before ending up at our accommodation for the night.
The sky was again very smokey, but there were no fires showing on the fires app.
Out of the city and into farming land and again we were struck and how dry it was. There were not a lot of stock in the paddocks, and most dams were bone dry.
We reached Cowra at around 11:00 and found our way to the POW camp site. The site is the place where, in 1944, the largest Prisoner of War breakout in modern military history occurred at Cowra. More than 1000 Japanese prisoners attempted to escape.
There is a replica of the garrison tower and a recorded message tells the history of the camp and the story of the breakout.
Even though it was again 35 degrees, a nice breeze made it a bit cooler and the information boards were under cover out of the sun.
The recorded message informed us that there was a holographic display presentation of the breakout story at the Cowra Information Centre, so we headed there to have a look.
The presentation is really cleverly done. I found a copy of it online.
Next to the Visitor Center was a cafe, so we thought it was as good a place as any to have lunch. We planned on a lightish lunch as we had chops and vegetables in the Engel fridge ready for dinner.
The menu looked nice, so I ordered drinks, a “Works Burger” and chips and asked if it could be cut in half for us to share. Apparently, it was too much to ask, and I was told that the burger was stacked up too high and it would be difficult to cut it in half. We changed the order to a “Steak Sandwich with the Lot” and Chips and that was OK 🙂 Our sandwich came out uncut, and we had to explain that we had asked for it to be cut as we were sharing. The waitress brought back a second plate and a knife for us to cut it.
After lunch, we were back on the road again. I was not able to find an AirBnB in Cowra, but managed to find one about 50kms further up the road on the way to Bathurst.
The AirBnB host had messaged me earlier in the day to say that our check-in time was 3:00pm. We were running a little early, so we drove around Cowra to have a look. Cowra has been the first place we have seen that is green 🙂 Council have done a good job keeping the parks well watered with bore water and it makes the town quite pretty.
We came across a car wash, so decided to wash the dust and bugs off the car. 🙂 The water also cooled the car down a lot and for the next half hour or so, the air conditioning worked much better.
On the highway, we saw a sign that said “Historic Carcoar”. We have plenty of time for a detour so off to the left we went.
What a surprise!!! A gorgeous little town, full of historic buildings from the late 1800’s A lovely creek runs through the town, and people were taking advantage of the cool water.
The whole town of Carcoar is classified by the National Trust as a built environment of significant interest
Our AirBnB accommodation for the night is a comfortable space attached to the host’s home. Originally, a large garage, it was converted by the owners for their friend to live in for a while.
We cooked our lamb chops for dinner, watched some TV and had a nice evening.
