13 July 1922
Travelling along the old road for three or four miles, some beautiful flat country is passed, but very little cultivated or lucerne. Off the road there are some lucerne paddocks, but there seems to be a good bit of dairying done judging from the milk houses and the number of vehicles met along the road with cream cans in them. Most of the paddocks were bare of grass and the cattle are not in too good condition. Most of the farm houses are old and many of the fences out of repair, some of them judging by their moss covered rails must be erected many years. Unlike the farms about Wellington not too many of them are netted, although plenty of bunnies are to be seen. Leaving the flat one begins to get into hilly country, some very steep hills have to be climbed and gone down, one near Apple Tree Flat being particularly steep. Yet in among these hills are little valleys of very rich soil as is usually the case where the soil is washed out of the hills into the alluvial lying between them. Some very fine crops of maize, and potatoes were seen, but no wheat, potatoes and pumpkins seemed to grow in plenty. There must have been some gold got here, in years gone by, as the remains of old shafts and holes are still seen. Along the road at various intervals one comes across a building that once evidently did duty as a public house in the golden days when the roads were crowded with teams and travellers. Many of these old buildings are falling fast into decay, and many of them will soon be a thing of the past. Farming is mostly carried on along the road in small areas only and the single furrow plough is still the universal implement, and in many paddocks many of the stumps are still there of original forest. To one used to flat country, the high hills, with the once beautiful forest of timber, victims of the ringbarkers axe, present an ever changing landscape, and winding in and out of the range of hills is the Cudgegong River, that provides a never ceasing water supply to the settlers. The first pioneers of settlement must have suffered untold hardships in the matter of transport and in some places can still be seen remains of the old bush tracks on which so much loading was brought by teams from Sydney or the nearest station of the advancing railway. With few exceptions all along this road appears to be very little doing in modern agriculture. From day to day, month to month, and year to year, the same old routine. There is a mail two or three times a week from Capertee to Mudgee, and a motor lorry replaces the team in carrying goods from Rylstone to Mudgee and vice versa. Some of the hills take some getting up too with a car1
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