The Masked Podcaster, modelling WIP
The beautiful Hunter Valley
This is what open cut mining looks like. If you’ve ever had a wine from the Hunter Valley, or used electricity in Sydney, then you ought to know what goes on here. I thought I had a clue, but this is was a bit of a rude shock.
On the road to nowhere
The coal travels to the power station on a conveyor belt, and we should be comforted that the clouds of grey stuff are just clouds. Nothing to see here folks.
Around here David got some bad news on the phone. We’re too far from Sydney to go back, so onwards we go….
This was the second “event” of our trip. First, we saw a totalled motorbike, with a dust covered helmet beside it. Not a happy sight. We pulled over to look for the rider, and found him, gushing blood, by the side of the road. We took him to the nearest road house. Steve – I hope you got home OK.
(When I was a kid, our neighbour lost one of her teenaged daughters to a motorbike accident. A car knocked Cheryl off the road, and she died of her injuries by the side of the road. Nobody stopped.)
We saw a sign with a picture of a cow and a sheep. The cows came first. There were a lot of them, and they were on both sides of the road, and on the road. Not a lot of grass to eat on the road, but cows are not allowed to join mensa.
Then the sheep. Note the sheep dog mid leap into ute.
Dog in ute.
Sheep bums.
Still life with cow.
We made it!
A rustic wool baler.
The masked podcaster finds his mark.
A wire sheep
The big bad ass ball winder
Machine number one. No idea what it is called, or what it does. See further posts for excuses.
The drum carder.
A lot of roving.
Two drum carders.
Unspun being turned into singles.
Plying.
The dye bath.
Yarny goodness.

Waiting for the dye bath.
Unspun. I bought some of this, and am killing braincells thinking of what can be done with it.
Raw Merino fleece. See the little crimps?
After carding.
Hmmmm…. Unspun.
Of course we had to shop a little…
Here is some of the yarn we didn’t buy.
The shop.
As we left, I spotted a calf in the neighbour’s yard.
Back off, human.
I’m eating.
OK?
And then there were sheep.
Sheep with black faces.
And a hunger for whatever we have in our pockets…
A great day was had by all, and we are already planning the next road trip!
I didn’t get home until nearly 11pm, so I had rather a slow start to tuesday.

These are great photos Lara – thank you for sharing them with us – did you fill the boot with samples?
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Thanks for the wonderful photos. Oh, and thanks for leaving SOME yarn in the shop!!!!
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Thanks so much for sharing pictures and the story of your road trip.
Merry Christmas!
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Hmmm… and suddenly I’m getting “your domain is about to exceed bandwidth limit” emails….
Oh, but nice pics 🙂
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I’m glad that someone got to go there first. This is a road trip I’ve been planning with some like-minded knitter friends of mine!! Will definitely make the trip. Did you go there and back in a day? I thought it was a weekend kind of thing.
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It was wonderful to have pictures to go along with David’s podcast….Your captions are great.
Happy 2007….
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Feels like I’m getting a personal tour of the mill from the pics. I visited Nundle about a year ago but it was a public holiday and they didn’t have tours running so I was really disappointed. This really makes up for it!
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