I turned off the dirt on to the Castlereagh Highway about forty kilometres\u00a0south of Mudgee. I had time, so when I got to Capertee I took the Glen Davis road east for no other reason than it was a nice day and I\u2019d never been on it.<\/p>\n
Cracker of a road. Twenty five kilometres of tar swervery, and then dirt for the last ten kilometres or so into Glen Davis. It\u2019s an old mining town, created during World War II when they started mining shale oil nearby, and mostly abandoned in the fifties when the Japanese stopped torpedoing ships and it became cheaper to import oil from the USA.<\/p>\n
It sits at the bottom of what I\u2019m told is the widest canyon on earth, with spectacular views of the canyon sides. Farmers grow beef cattle and lucerne on the valley floor nearby. None of the streets in town are paved and there are only a few houses and no shops. There\u2019s a boutique hotel, but its gates were closed and it looked like they catered for weddings, functions and dirty weekends, not thirsty travellers; so I turned around and headed back.<\/p>\n
Cracker of a road the other way, too.<\/p>\n
I added that area to my list of roads to explore. I headed south on the Castlereagh Highway and over the mountains. I stopped at a service station a bit before the motorway and filled the tank. The young Indian guy behind the counter tried to upsell me.<\/p>\n
\u201cDo you have any discount vouchers or a Flybuys card?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNone of that malarkey\u201d, I replied.<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you like two Mars Bars for a dollar?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019m on the Jameson diet, and you\u2019re not allowed to eat chocolate.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI have never heard of that diet,\u201d he said. \u201cIs it working?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d I said. \u201cI\u2019ve lost two days already.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWould you like to buy a DVD?\u201d he asked, pointing to a display of them on the counter.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow why would I want to buy a DVD when Rick Astley has a huge movie collection and will lend you all but one for no charge?\u201d<\/p>\n
He absorbed this for a minute.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhich one won\u2019t he lend you?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cWell obviously he\u2019s never going to give you Up\u201d, I said, and put twenty five dollars on the counter.<\/p>\n
I got home about half an hour later. I told the girlchild I had a hilarious conversation with an Indian, and relayed it to her. She was impressed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can\u2019t believe you rickrolled someone without using a computer\u201d, she said. \u201cYou put the fun in dysfunctional, Dad.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m almost certain she meant it as a compliment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Cracker of a road. Twenty five kilometres of tar swervery, and then dirt for the last ten kilometres or so into Glen Davis.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":14876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[221],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14875"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14879,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14875\/revisions\/14879"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}