Canowindra was redolent with history, and it was my type of history. In October 1863, the bushranger Ben Hall\u2019s gang took over the village for three days, herded the whole population and a few passers-through into the inn, and \u201centertained\u201d them.<\/p>\n
I bet it was hilarious.<\/p>\n
In September 2017, I rode in to the town on a Sunday, strode manfully up to the door of the Royal Hotel, and pushed it. It was locked.<\/p>\n
I got back on my bike and rode a hundred or so metres down to the Canowindra Hotel. It wasn\u2019t locked.<\/p>\n
I asked if I could get lunch. The bartender said here\u2019s the menu, and the special for today is lamb cutlets. I was cold. I asked if he had red wine, and ordered a glass of merlot. He filled it right to the brim. \u201cYou pour a generous glass of wine, friend\u201d, I told him. \u201cHow many coppers are there in this town?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNone working today\u201d he said happily, so I ordered the cutlets, paid, and sat down with my wine. \u201cThis is a comfy town\u201d, I thought.<\/p>\n
It had appeared that way on the way in. The sheep were freshly shorn and there were lambs in the flocks, the cattle looked fat and delicious, and the canola and lucerne painted the fields in patriotic colours.<\/p>\n
The cutlets were spectacular. \u201cWhere do you get your cutlets?\u201d I asked the bartender. \u201cThey don\u2019t taste like the ones from Coles at Neutral Bay.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAh,\u201d he said, \u201cthe butcher\u2019s changed hands. One of the local sheep farmers bought it. He kills his own.\u201d<\/p>\n
I\u2019m thinking he doesn\u2019t pump his meat with water like the supermarkets do either.<\/p>\n
I called Bly when I got back. \u201cWe used to go for a day ride once a month\u201d, I said. \u201cLet\u2019s do it again. Come to my place 0800 Sunday, and we will go to Canowindra for cutlets.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d said Bly.<\/p>\n
\u201cCanowindra\u201d, I said. \u201cIt\u2019s really famous. It\u2019s got a fish fossil museum.\u201d<\/p>\n
The state government had put on a double demerits weekend for us. The police had set up a big roadblock at Lithgow to do random breath tests. It was inconvenient, and the one administering the test to me wanted to be a human being and chat, and asked where we were going. I lied to him. \u201cNice\u201d, he said. \u201cRide safe.\u201d<\/p>\n
We didn\u2019t, of course. We got to those secret lonely roads and rode really fast. I scraped the bash plate on the V-Strom on the road twice in corners. That thing\u2019s going to have to come off.<\/p>\n
The bartender at the pub said the cutlets were still on, so we had them for lunch. I asked if the town cops had every Sunday off, and he said \u201cYep.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some local guy stopped by our table and wanted to chat. He said the town wasn\u2019t as comfy as it looked, because the late rains didn\u2019t happen. He was going to rip out a barley crop and turn it into cattle feed. Then he was going to buy some cheap cattle from up north where they\u2019re in drought, and fatten them on the barley, and sell them. \u201cYou can get a cow with calf for a thousand dollars\u201d, he told me. \u201cLast year it was two thousand.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThose were good cutlets\u201d, said Bly a little later.<\/p>\n
\u201cI told you\u201d, I said. \u201cLet\u2019s go to the fish fossil museum. It\u2019s only ten bucks.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not that interested in fish fossils\u201d, said Bly.<\/p>\n
So we swapped bikes, and I rode the Homostrada to Orange while he rode my DL. We filled our tanks and I made him follow me on the way out, and showed him the Icely Road route to Bathurst. It\u2019s winding and wonderfully scenic.<\/p>\n
The rest of the family had gone to the in-law\u2019s place for lunch, so I dropped in on the way home. My hair looked funny and there were bugs dying on my jacket. Everyone said hi Al, where have you been, and I said Canowindra.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhere?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s really famous,\u201d I said. \u201cIt\u2019s got a fish fossil museum.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat did you go THERE for?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cTo eat lamb cutlets\u201d, I told them.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy did you go three hundred kilometres to eat lamb cutlets?\u201d<\/p>\n
I wasn\u2019t expecting the Spanish Inquisition. \u201cThey\u2019re good cutlets\u201d, I said.<\/p>\n
They seemed okay with that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Canowindra was redolent with history, and it was my type of history<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":542159,"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\/542145"}],"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=542145"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542453,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/542145\/revisions\/542453"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/542159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=542145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=542145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bikeme.tv\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=542145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}