Wednesday 3rd August Croydon

  A busy and enjoyable day around Croydon. Rick and Rob started the morning with a game of golf on the Croydon golf course. There was no charge to play so this made it quite appealing. The boys had to walk and it was quite warm so an early start was a good idea. While they were out at the golf course, I went for a walk around the heritage area of Croydon. The council have done a wonderful job keeping and restoring many of the old buildings from the days of the gold mines. I visited the old “male ward” of the old hospital, the town hall, old police station and cells, court house etc. The streets have replica heritage light posts that were made using the old moulds from the late 1890s. All the buildings are filled with information about the town, whether it is about the hospital and its development or the films shown in the town hall, cases heard in the court etc. In the court house you pressed a button and heard an actual hearing from the 1890s. Out in the jails cells the dummy started talking to you telling you why he was innocent and shouldn’t been locked up. Needless to say I spent quite a lot of time here. All this is provided free to the public. It really is a credit to the council. I returned home and the boys were back from their golf. After an early lunch, Rick, Rob and I headed back out to Lake Belmore, the boys to check the nets and pots and me to kayak. It was a lovely activity on a very hot afternoon. Returning to the caravan park we all headed to the pool for a cool off. Following this we drove to the Croydon Railway Station to go on the old Gulflander. This is the train that is known as the “train to nowhere”. It runs from Normanton to Croydon and was originally built to connect the goldfields to Normanton. We hopped on the old train and went for a short journey into the bush. There we stopped a dinner of beef stew and fruit salad, while watching the sun start to set. It was lovely to experience this iconic train.