Pops, Picture, and Pioneer Village in Capella

Last night the caravan park managers put on a movie, Warhorse, in the camp kitchen- we chose not to go because we'd seen it (great movie), it was cold, and there were for a change some good shows on TV- John and Marg went to the movie and enjoyed it. I've said before that this is a particularly well run park- another example is that when hundreds of birds, mostly lorikeets, decided to roost in the trees above our caravans, the manager came and shooed them away with a starting pistol or some such.  Pop! Pop! and chatter chatter from the birds, but it worked.  They found somewhere else to sleep and to crap.

The temperature plummeted overnight and was 10.1 degrees inside the caravan at 7am but the day proved to be another beautiful, cloudless one.

This morning we visited the Pioneer Village here, an excellent museum made up of pioneer buildings transported from their original sites and set up here in the town. The homestead was made entirely of timber, pit-sawn, and constructed without a single nail.  The uprights had vertical grooves and the wall timbers were slid into the grooves. The ceilings were also timber, and the roof was timber shakes.  There was a shady wide verandah and the building was roomy and spacious, with the kitchen built as a separate part at the back, a common occurrence because the old kitchens often caught fire, and this separation prevented the whole house from being burnt.

Peak Downs homestead transported from its original site and restored in Capella without a single nail being used.

John is really into detail and it took ages for him to look at it, then he decided to photograph it so all up, about an hour after entering, we'd only seen one building, with many more to go.  The next was the shearer's shed, a museum in itself, showing many aspects of early rural life from agriculture to mining and including education, boy scouts, sewing and crafts.

Chris then entered a huge shed full of tractors, from whence he emerged much, much later.  I was hoping John wouldn't notice the shed, but Chris had to show him, and the two of them were in there even longer.  Some of the tractors were mildly interesting but not enough to make me go into the dark interior.  There was one outside which had been made from an old army tank cut down.

                                     Improved army tank
In another shed John came upon an old army truck which resembled one he used to have, right down to the hatch which opened above the passenger seat for the gunner to stand on the seat and use his bren gun.  I swear they took half an hour just looking at this truck, even to popping the bonnet and looking inside.  They didn't even notice the big harvester next to it.

                                                     Secret Men's Business


Another unusual recycling was the old watertank turned into a bar.  The barman goes inside via a door cut into the back, there are two porthole windows and a fan on top for ventilation.

                                                    New use for a water tank.


The museum also has an old train carriage and several other sheds of farm equipment, which luckily John didn't notice.  We'd been at the place for a good two hours before we left on our drive, which turned out to be a tad disappointing.  We were on the self-drive tour known as the mines drive, and we did see an open cut coalmine (in the distance) and the gateway to an underground coal mine, as well as the washery and loader (a bit closer, but still at a distance), and that was it for coal mines- we see more every time we drive to Newcastle airport past the coal loaders, or up the Hunter Valley past the open cut mines.  We didn't even get out of the car on this drive, no nice place to stop for a cuppa, but we did have another look at the Peak Range and we all enjoyed the drive, despite its not being what it was cracked up to be.

We had our previously packed lunches- back at the caravan park!