Diggin' it:Panning for gold in Bathurst.Credit:Elissa Blake
With campervan loaded for adventure,Elissa Blake and her family rumble into a historic past.
''Gee,she's a big unit,"says Barry Cubitt,the ranger at the Abercrombie Caves Reserve,deep in the gold country of NSW."Sure you can get it across the bridge?"Looking at the narrow concrete causeway separating the car park from the two camping grounds and then back at my"big unit",a four-tonne,six-berth campervan,I'm not sure at all. I opt to park under a nearby tree. Even then,I manage to scrape the airconditioning unit. At 3.5 metres,this van is mighty tall,too.
I'm at the mid-point of a family tour of the goldfields,a rough circle on the map bounded by Bathurst,Forbes,Young and Goulburn,encompassing the picturesque townships of Sofala,Hill End,Canowindra and Grenfell.
These are sedate country towns now,but it wasn't always so. It's reckoned that after news of the first gold discovery at Ophir in 1852 got around,an estimated 370,000 migrants flocked to the area within a year. This mass movement would forever alter the social and economic fabric of the state and generate some of its most enduring mythology - that of its bushrangers.
It was near our campsite at Abercrombie Caves,for example,that Ralph Entwistle and his bushranging Ribbon Gang once hid,thinking themselves safe in its limestone caverns,only to be captured in a shootout with troopers dispatched from Sydney.
Things aren't quite so exciting now. In fact,it's eerily quiet in this park,which is accessed via a winding three-kilometre road that snakes down the valley off the main road between Bathurst and Goulburn. The nearest township is 15 minutes away,Trunkey Creek,a dot on the map that used to be a bustling base camp for hundreds of diggers. Apart from a couple of tents pitched across the river,however,today we are the only people here,and like almost everyone else who makes the detour,we're here to see the caves.
Guided tours of the limestone cave system take place twice a day (four times during holiday periods) and there's nothing that Barry doesn't know about them. Self-guided tours are allowed to view the cave system's features,which include the largest unsupported limestone arch in the southern hemisphere and the goldminers dance platform,which dates from 1880,when the caves were used as an entertainment venue.
We picked up our van - a six-berth Euro Deluxe on a VW chassis - at the Apollo depot in Mascot.
First test:nosing the unfamiliar and very large seeming campervan into the merciless traffic on Gardeners Road before easing it up King Street in Newtown,and then on to Parramatta Road. Driving-wise,it doesn't get any harder than this. Next stop,Katoomba.