Cowra


Wednesday morning, the 28th, it was time to leave the dam. Headed south and arrived at the town of Mandurama. There were a couple of nice old buildings but not much else to hold our interest. It seems every single town has a ‘Royal Hotel’.




The next town was Lyndhurst and that seemed to have less in the way of old buildings. If it did they were well hidden. So we kept on trucking to Cowra. We went straight to the Showground Campground where they did power and water for $20 a night. After set up and lunch we went to the Information Centre where there was a very good ‘hologram’ display of the Cowra breakout.

From there we went to the Prisoner of War Camp. The camp was very widespread. There was not just the Japanese prisoners housed there. There were several nationalities including Italians who got on very well with the Aussie soldiers and farmers who they were farmed out to (pardon the pun). The Japanese, however, were not happy campers and were ashamed that they were prisoners of war and believed that their families would rather they died than be prisoners. Most of them were only prisoners as they were wounded or unconscious through starvation and disease when caught. So about a thousand Japanese prisoners tried to escape. About three hundred of them were either shot or suicided in the escape and days following. Five Australian soldiers were killed by the Japanese. There was a replica guard tower erected at the site. There were a few displays there and plaques talking about the breakout.





The Japanese armed themselves with table knives they sharpened and baseball bats. This plaque has a photo of the weapons collected afterward. You may need to click on the photo to see it better.



We left the site of the POW camp and visited the cemetery to give thanks and pay homage to the Australians who died during the breakout. Very close by is the town lookout and we checked out the views of the town.




Then back to camp. I pulled out the BBQ and put a roast lamb on the baby webber and did some work on the blog. We had a beautiful baked dinner thanks to some Blayney lamb.



Next morning we left the Showground with the van on the back and went and visited the Japanese Gardens. Now most of you know that gardens and art are not my thing. So having to spend $13 a head to go and see it goes against the grain for me. By the way that was the first seniors discount I have gotten now that I qualify for that concession. I suggested that Linda just go in and I would read or do stuff at the van but she did not like that idea and did not want to go in without me. So I made the sacrifice and said I would go with her to see the gardens. However, Linda pointed out that she only wanted to visit Japan to see the Japanese Gardens and now that she had seen this one she did not need to go there. Therefore, that little investment has saved me the thousands of dollars that it would cost us both to visit and tour Japan. They were nice gardens though:













That done and we left Cowra and headed for Canowindra.

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