Warwick Day 4 – Pringle Cottage and Glengallan Homestead and Heritage Centre

Today we woke up to a very cold morning. Even inside it was 2 degrees, outside the minimum was -2.9. It was difficult to get up as we didn’t want to leave our cosy bed. Fortunately we have good heating and the sun also helped in bringing the temperature up inside.

Graeme came to pick us up at about 9.45 a.m. Our first visit was to a heritage project called Pringle Cottage. The complex is run by donations and volunteers. Pringle Cottage is in it’s normal location, but some of the other buildings have been moved from surrounding areas. An example is the shepherd’s cottage in the image above.

Sometimes when there is a lot of detail and artifacts it can become too overwhelming. However in this case, we had people very knowledgeble about the displays. There was a delightful carriage that a hotel owner used to bring guests from the station in order to be competitive. A local photographic studio had eventually closed down and the equipment donated.

There were movie and still cameras of many types on display, very interesting to me. When we looked into the shepherd’s cottage there was someone on hand to tell us about it.

We looked through Pringle Cottage and heard about it’s history. Well done to the all volunteer historical society for all their work. As we were going around there were small groups of school children being taken around and in some cases encouraged to be hands on with objects.

Our next stop was Glengallan Homestead, which is located out of Warwick, through the usual lovely farmland. We arrived hungry and had a light and delicious lunch in the cafe before going over to explore the building. Glengallan had an interesting beginning and rather sad history of design, use by different families as a home, and eventual decline into ruin before being taken over by the Glengallan Homestead Trust and partially restored. It is a simple and very elegant building, which was intended to be much larger, but one thing led to another and it has never been completed.

Graeme was busy for the rest of today and dropped us off home in the afternoon. We had a rest, of course, then I put the electronic pressure cooker on for tea (curried mince and veggies, enough for tonight and three extra meals), and Stephen fixed the connector on our good water hose.

The caravan park is filling up and seems much more lively, with people coming in for the Jumpers and Jazz Festival.

We’ve spent time planning out the next part of our journey. It is over 1,000kms to Broken Hill, and we want to spend a day or so in Burke on the way. Tomorrow our plan is to go into the centre of town to explore the Jumpers and Jazz exhibits and perhaps even catch some jazz. We have a little shopping to do as well. Then we will leave town and go about 45kms to our next overnight place.

It seems a long while since we arrived here in what for us is a strange town. With Graeme’s help we now feel that we know a great deal about it and the surrounding villages – enough to feel we would enjoy spending much more time here if we could.