The place we are staying for the two nights in Hay is magnificent. It is a place called Claughton House ande is owned by the Uniting Church. It was set up as a boarding house for school children of all ages from outback regions across Australia to live in as they attended school in Hay. From our point of view it has everything we want - real beds to sleep on, lots of working showers on site, plenty of toilets. These latter two are significant. When staying in a church hall, for example, we usually have to bus ourselves to a caravan park or community centre with showers, and the church may well have only one toilet, two if you are lucky. Get 24 people trying to organise themselves quickly in the morning and you can see the potential for traffic jams.
Claughton House also has a great kitchen, dining and lounge areas.
Unfortunately the numbers of students has declined over the years. Looking at the student photos each year, numbers have decreased from around 80 in its heyday to 15-20 over the past couple of years. I believe it is not operating any longer and the facility is up for sale. It would be a pity if there were no takers, but it is hard to see any other sort of use for the facility. I can't imagine a conference facility being viable in Hay and I guess the dormitories are not really up to normal conference standards, even if the rest of the building is.
The weather today is the same as yesterday, so makes it a great drying day for washing. (Last major washing day!)
This morning there seemed to be a sort of kitchen cook-off. Two people independently decided that they would cook up something special, so in one stove we had bacon and eggs being turned out, and on another stove omelettes with mushrooms, onions, tomatoes being turned out. A pleasant leisurely morning.
Apparently the Hay Show is on this weekend. I don't know that I'll bother, but I think a couple of the young folk (actually we only have two young folk) will give it a try.
I'm told that you can wander down from Claughton House to grassy banks on the Murrumbidgee River. I'll have to try that later on.
The picture shows the entrance to Claughton House.
No comments:
Post a Comment