Hillgrove and Bakers Creek Falls

A couple weeks ago we went to Hillgrove, a tiny town approximately 30km east of Armidale to buy a washing machine.  The town is rather strange with signs everywhere informing you what used to be there.  It used to be a prominent mining community and while there's still mining operations going on, it's very much diminished and most of the original population has left.

On our way back we stopped by Bakers Creek Gorge, just a little bit off the main road.  It's actually a really beautiful lookout point.  (And very easy, no hike required.)  I didn't think to bring the camera, but I snapped a couple photos from my phone.

My apologies for the lack of photos lately.  Seems like we've been pretty busy and haven't done much else, but I've also been a bit lazy and unmotivated.  I have some photos of our drive through the Main Range a month ago on our way back from Queensland to post, and just last weekend we went to the Pine Forest.  I'll try to put these up before our Long Weekend trip to Bellingen/Dorrigo/Coffs Harbour.  Next Monday, October 6th is a Public Holiday; Labour Day.  First Public Holiday since the Queen's Birthday and the last before Christmas and Boxing Day, and we're going to get out of town for a couple days.

In other news, the washing machine has mostly been an awesome development in our daily lives, most notably the spinner.  Unexpected plot twist: our neighbor stays up all night and has asked us kindly not to use it in the morning.  (Our laundry/bath has a shared wall with his side of the house.)  Unfortunately, morning is the only time we can do laundry, because our laundry tree only gets sunlight from 9am-2pm.  Tomorrow I'm going to experiment with putting the machine on a piece of carpet we bought to try to quiet it a little, and bringing it into the kitchen.  So.. we'll see what happens.