Trail · Central West

The Gold Country Run

Stops: 8
Days: 3
Route: 187 km
No pokies: 8 of 8

Eight pubs across the diggings west of the Blue Mountains, none of them with a gaming machine.

The route follows the 1850s rushes rather than the highway: Sofala and Hill End on the Turon, down through Bathurst to Rockley and Trunkey Creek, then west to Carcoar, Millthorpe and Blayney. Several of these towns held thousands of people in the 1870s and hold a few hundred now, which is why the pubs are larger than the towns around them.

Three days at a touring pace. Distances are short — the whole loop is under 300km — but the roads are slow and half the point is stopping.

Not yet driven. Every pub below is on the register and the details come from it — the addresses, the gaming figures, the licences. None has been visited, so nothing here is first-hand yet. There are no photographs either.