Autumn in Central West, NSW

in #orange-nsw2 years ago

This weekend mrshill and I attended the Cabonne community glow in Canowindra, an event which included a spectacular ballooning event. It started at around 3pm - a few musical acts (mostly cover bands) entertained us while we shared a bottle of wine and had some food. The headline act - James Johnston - surprised us. He was introduced as a country singer - not my style at all, but he was a great performer and we really enjoyed his show. His speciality seemed to be randomly throwing his own renditions (one or two verses) of pop/popular songs (eg - Prince, John Farnham, AC/DC) in the middle of more traditional country and western tunes. But the thing we were most looking forward to was the balloon show. Hot air ballooning (also not my thing) has put the small country town of Canowindra on the map. Each year it hosts an international balloon challenge, culminating in this event. This was not a competitive event. In fact, the balloons did not even get off the ground which also surprised us. Makes sense though - I don’t think hot air ballooning in the dark would be very safe. Instead, once James Johnston’s show finished, the balloons started to inflate …

Inflating

Once inflated, the floodlights went out and they put on a spectacular show for us -

Inflated and all lit up!

So pretty! One day I might get over my fear of heights and actually go up in one of these things 😀.

Today we took a short drive to Hillside harvest, a pick your own farm just out of Orange.

Hillside harvest

Last year, also in April, we went picking at this farm with some friends. This year we went for something to do on a Sunday. We came home with bagfuls of apples, plums and figs -

Hillside harvest on a plate (please excuse supermarket-bought hot cross buns)

at much cheaper prices than you’d pay from the supermarket and much better quality! It was well worth the trip.