{"id":1152,"date":"2026-04-20T21:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/?p=1152"},"modified":"2026-04-20T21:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T11:50:07","slug":"west-of-the-great-dividing-range","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/west-of-the-great-dividing-range\/","title":{"rendered":"West of the Great Dividing Range"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Heading west via Bells Line – who’d have ever thought it would be the most direct route!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For me the trip commenced on Old Windsor Rd, through Richmond and meandering through the goat track known as Bells Line of Road. My next stop was Bilpin. The Grumpy Baker.<\/p>\n\n\n

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The chunky steak pie is one of the best I’ve had. The pie was big and it felt like I’d eaten a steak without the gristle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the Darling Causeway through to Lithgow, Bells becomes Chifley Road, and to put it bluntly since the closure of Victoria Pass this section of asphalt is even worse than it ever was. I left early on a Friday morning in an attempt to beat the traffic, it was a lack lustre effort. To all those content creators trying to glorify this goat track – get a fucking life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next destination was Woolshed Flat in Turon River National Park, it was nice to get there early afternoon, secure the last spot available and kick back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After months of dry, the Turon has some flow. With some luck the next few months will be wet. And speaking of wet, the rain was patchy for most of the early afternoon clearing up later in the day.
Perfect Autumn conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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After an early dinner Brad<\/a> arrived just in time to douse the barely alight fire with some well needed kerosene.
For me a mental note; refill lighter with fluid!<\/p>\n\n\n

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After a few night caps we both decided to call it an early night, and to be honest I don’t remember my head hitting the pillow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Morning broke and before I knew it the mandatory coffee machine photo was taken and I was packed, ready to hit the next destination.<\/p>\n\n\n

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Some may call me a pie connoisseur, others may call me a fat bastard! TBH, I couldn’t care \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post tummy refill wood stop; none of the servo shit, proper honest super dry hardwood – the stuff that burns and keeps you warm!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Next stop Lidsdale State Forest, after airing down and sussing out some potential camp spots we found a nice opening by the Coxs River and kicked back for the remainder of the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Getting accustomed to the now shorter daylight has thrown me, dinner done and dusted by 5.30pm, and dishing in the dark!
Nothing better than a real mans meal, a good old fry up. <\/p>\n\n\n

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Before long we had the fire roaring!<\/p>\n\n\n

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A couple of drinks and some fireside banter took away that eerie feeling that tomorrow was the end of another adventure…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before I knew it the coffee pic was on the camera roll, the hard track out of camp was taken and we were airing up!<\/p>\n\n\n

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Ohh and there was one more for the road…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Heading west via Bells Line – who’d have ever thought it would be the most direct route! For me the trip commenced on Old Windsor Rd, through Richmond and meandering through the goat track known as Bells Line of Road. My next stop was Bilpin. The Grumpy Baker. The chunky steak pie is one of…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,13,79,37],"tags":[6,78,48,10,77,74,20],"class_list":["post-1152","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-camping","category-hilux","category-meat-pie","category-turon","tag-camping","tag-coxs-river","tag-food","tag-hilux","tag-meat-pie","tag-pie","tag-turon-river"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1152"}],"version-history":[{"count":31,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1202,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1152\/revisions\/1202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shintara.net\/chronicles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}