A trip to nowhere in particular

Today we were supposed to go the races at Bombala.   Bombala is a small town about an hour south of Cooma, which itself is about 2 hours south of Canberra.

Bombala has a single race day each year as a major fund-raiser for the local schools, emergency services, rural fire brigade, etc.  The racecourse is actually just a pub with a racetrack attached.  This is what it was like the last time we went in 2002.

Anyway, Karyn is in a club called “Women in Racing” that does regular trips to events like this, so we decided to go along and avoid having to drive ourselves.  However, when we got to the bus at 7:30am we were told that the races were cancelled because of the recent heavy rains and the predictions for further rain during the day.  It was a further disappointment for us because one of our horses, Diamond Jay, was going to be racing there.

Nevertheless, the trip was still on they said.  They would find somewhere for us to go – like a kind of mystery bus trip.

It was a great trip, with lots of alcohol involved, starting at around 8am.  I took pictures of Karyn all day and night with a champagne glass in her hand at each time.  But she refused to let me put the pictures up here.

So we ended up at a little place south of Bombala called Delegate.  It can’t be too far from the Snowy mountains because it was so bloody cold.

Here are some pictures of the place.

As you can see, the town is really just a pub with a few other buildings for company.  Most of which seemed abandoned.

So we spent the best part of the day in the local pub, which fortunately had its own TAB and plenty of TVs showing the Sydney and Melbourne races.

All day the weather changed from sun, to sleet, to snow, and back to sun.  The temperature was close to freezing all day.  And the wind was about 50-60 km/h – so the snow and sleet was blown horizontal.  I was only about to get out once for a walk, and even then I couldn’t go far because the next sleet/snow shower was never more that about 15 minutes away.

But the group of people we were with were fun and we had a great day.