Our drive to get here was through territory we hadn't been in before , and felt like a missing jigsaw puzzle piece had just slipped into it's rightful spot . We came through Sutton and Gundaroo on our way to Gunning and the Hume Hwy . The drive was uneventful ( no idiots ) which was surprising in itself given it's the 1st day of the year . The countryside is all golden , grass seed heads all over - they did have good rains earlier in the season , but now it's all long dead grass !
Lunch at Bookham , because we could , and we were off again , another 90 klms and we were home for a few days . Set up in no time , it was time to go for a walk and check out the river and these two fascinating old bridges .
This is the Murrumbidgee River beside the park , with the newer road bridge .
There was a mini cyclone came through here a few days ago , ripping branches from trees , this tree was almost completely gone .
The road bridge has been upgraded over the years , when you see the old Prince Alfred Bridge you will understand why !! This is it .
It was built in the 1880's , and probably hasn't had too much maintenance since then !!! It is a "managed ruin ", basically I think that means - leave it till it drops !!
Access has been stopped on the old bridge , understandably !! so we wandered around and over the newer one .
The new bridge is like a giant size meccano set - these nuts are about 200mm across , and there are rivets everywhere - reminds me of the harbour bridge , right down to the thick gal paint !!
You can see where the old Prince Alfred bridge used to go straight through , now the road does a sharp left turn , and on the inside of the turn are a couple of old electric pumps that were used to pull water from the river , and a bore .
From here we got a better view of the old railway bridge , no names this time , just the bridge .
Back around and past the park is the golf course , the rail bridge runs along the edge of the course . It stretches across the flood plain towards the centre of town , and almost appears to join Prince Alfred Bridge .
Both bridges are an engineering marvel , to have withstood the weights of traffic and trains over a distance of nearly 1,000 metres , quite remarkable !!
The other thing here at the moment is the noise of the cicadas - a high pitched and deafening trill that just doesn't end , reminds me of my childhood beside the Dingo Creek at Marlee . Definitely not the place to have a headache !!
That's it for today , here's a map link :- https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jSyxtG6FPav2Ks-nRJRCV8e7h6s&usp=sharing
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