An old town visited.

Today our explorations took us further south from Coffs Harbour to a small town inland from Nambucca Heads, through beautiful dairy country and into the hills.
I had assumed that Bowraville was a gold mining town from what I had read on the Internet but the various monuments in the town, to the past told otherwise.
Bowra, as it was first known, was a wood logging area for the Cedar-getters. Cedar was once a prized timber and was used for making everything from banana boxes to houses and furniture. Very little cedar is left in any of the areas that were chosen for logging – When logging first began the cedars were massive trees and each one yielded lots of usable timber.
The town centre of Bowraville is a testament to the past, the style of the shops with verandas reaching to the edge of the footpath is typical of the style of building from around the beginning of the 20th century, which was when the Australian towns really started to become more permanent.
Settlement of many town in Australia was begun with the cedar getters, miners or farmers (depending on what brought the people to the district) and their families living in very primitive accommodation such as canvas tents or homes made from kerosene cans, hessian and with tramped earth floors. I have an older friend who’s father was a timber-man and she started her life as an infant in a tent not far from where her father was working. However her life began in the back blocks of Queensland.
The style of the shopping area of Australian towns has not changed much over the years – until fairly recently – so where-ever you travel in this huge continent, you will find a town that reminds you of one you have seen somewhere else! The Australian sun is so fierce that the veranda was a sure way of encouraging the passing customer to stay a while and look in the window!
The old hotel in Bowraville proudly displays its age with 1912 emblazoned on the top façade. The ironwork veranda railing may be original or it may have replaced timber railings, this style of wrought ironwork can be seen on old pubs and terraced houses and mansions all over the country. The expensive terrace homes in Sydney that are adorned with similar iron lacework date back to this same era.
The town may give the appearance of being locked in the past however I was very aware that the town was busy and there were people walking and driving about. I have visited many small country towns and not found one to be quite as “alive” as this one.
AJ