Today I would like to share with you a Google meet-up that myself and @Blue_bullet were involved in, and that’s our Goulburn Road Trip! To give a brief summary, Bibu asked in this post if there were other Sydney local guides, to which many of us eagerly responded. @RobFranceInOz told us that he was from Goulburn, which then sparked a brilliant idea to help map the area, as well as see a peculiar something as well, that I will leave until the end of this recap! In a little bit of trivia, did you know that Goulburn was Australia’s first inland city patented back in 1863 by Queen Victoria?
So without further ado, let’s begin!
Goulburn Road Trip, NSW
It was a beautiful day and morning to wake up. Didn’t have much sleep the night before, but that didn’t stop me from the excitement that was to unfold. I made my way to Chatswood to meet Bibu via train one hour and twenty minutes, only for us to drive back towards my area via the M4 and M7 motorways! I don’t actually mind long trips, and public transport is relatively a safe haven for deep thought and relaxation.
For the majority of the road trip, we talked about plenty of things. We talked about photography, the beautiful weather, music, our experience with driving (we’re both P-Platers!), our country and plenty of countless things. While forcing him to stop at every small rest area to snag a few pictures, what was expected to only take two hours and fifteen minutes resulted in a three hour and forty-five minute road trip instead! For your happy-go-lucky roadster and Google Mapper, this was an excellent opportunity to map the south-west corner boundaries of the Sydney Conquest project, which will spark a massive zoom out from the locals and
finally venturing into the outskirts of Sydney!
On the way, we stopped at the Partridge VC Rest Area for a nice small sausage roll, followed by the 7-Eleven Pheasants Nest South, and then the midway point at Heatherbrae’s Pies, where we had a little bit of a lunch break. We enjoyed the view on the way there, kept on talking, and also Justine (sorry can’t tag, your name is ambiguous, we missed out) had messaged us expressing her apologies due to an unforeseen circumstance. That’s okay, there will be many other opportunities for all of us to meet!At long last we finally made it to Goulburn, at around 1:45pm. We parked at the local KFC where there was a little bit of trees to shelter us from the increasingly warm sun, and a lot of space and quiet to park. Goulburn is a town rich in history, with plenty of buildings and facades retained throughout centuries, repurposed and renovated in numerous ways, as well as many of the regional museums, monuments and civic centres that itself as a major regional city prides itself in. There is barely any traffic (which is good news for any Sydneysider), and the community is quite close knit. Also a city of churches like Newcastle, Bibu and I walked around the majority of the city’s main centre Auburn Street and around the main features.
Some features of Goulburn
- Top-Left: Goulburn Post Office
- Top: LJ’s Carvery, a major diner, and an example of Goulburn’s recurring elements of musicality across the town.
- Top-Right: St. Saviour’s Cathedral
- Bottom-Left: Tree Spirits Public Artwork
- Bottom: Tesla electric-charger stations. This is the first time I’ve encountered these, and in the middle of a regional town too!
- Bottom-Right: Belmore Park gazebo, which instead the listing has a picture of a building on the other side of the town instead.
At long last Bibu and I ventured to South Goulburn to finally arrive to what we had set out to find, the Big Merino! Rambo, the 15 metre high ram is a monument to Goulburn and the surrounding district’s fine wool industry. I was excited to take a couple of pictures and look around the gift shop. At long last our journey was finally done with only about two hours to explore Goulburn (many of the historical museums close at 3:00pm, should go there earlier), and so Babu and I headed back home, of course with stops to each of the rest areas on the way too! Instead I headed off to Westpoint Blacktown, which has fast upload-speeds in its wi-fi to help me get all my photos uploaded to Google Photos and to all their respective listings, and so there I bid Bibu farewell and he went on his way, until I bumped into a stationary jeep. Ouch!
That concludes the meet-up for the day. With a little few weeks in the planning, it was unfortunate that not many people had expressed their interest to go, and that Justine had to pull out the night before. Nonetheless, it was still plenty of fun, got to meet a new local guide and explore Australia’s first regional inland city.
Until the next time, cheers.