We've just returned from one of our regular trips south to Melbourne to visit our daughter. Usually, we stay over a couple of nights on the way down, spend some time with her, drive on to visit my sister-in-law at Eden, then stay a couple of nights on our drive home. But this time, we decided to make it about the Journey, rather than the Destination. So we took our time coming home.

We spurned our favourite highways and embraced the by-ways instead, and what a lovely time we had!

As we drove along, we spotted a name on a signpost to a town that we both remembered from family holidays as children, so we just had to turn off to see if it had changed in the past ... ahem number of years.

What a gem! It's one of those places that you come to as you round a bend (as you can see from the photo of Central Tilba). We were surprised to see the National Trust sign, but when we got into the town itself, we understood why ... all the old buildings have been preserved and are operating as tea-houses and eateries of various sorts. It's become the perfect spot for day-trippers.

Directly across from where the photos of the "family" were taken is the local school ... and if there's a heaven for school teachers, its name is Central Tilba! Can you imagine looking out the window as your class pours over its sums and seeing that view? Wow!

After our success with Tilba, we opted to leave even the by-ways and started to follow winding country roads to visit places long since by-passed by frantic drivers speeding between the capital cities. When I was a girl (and you can stifle that rude comment you were about to make ...) my grandfather had a tiny house in what was then a speck on the map inhabited only by keen fishermen (which he was).

Dad and I would sometimes go down for a couple of days if Mum couldn't get time off work during the school holidays. Grandfather's house consisted of one bedroom, a tiny bathroom, a kitchen-dining-living room and a little sleepout (enclosed front verandah) which was my quarters for our stay. The toilet was your genuine Aussie dunny out the back, home to families of spiders that seemed to increase in number every time we visited. Because of the cramped living conditions (we're talking about the spiders here, not the humans) a few of the more daring took up residence in the Big House, and grandfather wouldn't let us shoo them outside because, as he said, "They keep those mossies under control."

So dinner time around the kitchen table was spent furtively checking that the eight-legged residents were minding their table manners and not planning to abseil down from the ceiling corners in search of a tasty fly or mosquito.

This visit, the Love of My Life and I took the time on our way home to detour to revisit Grandfather's house (or at least to see if we could find it), and we did. It's always a funny feeling to go back to the places you haven't seen since you were a child, isn't it? We found the house, still standing and also in good repair, which made us feel happy, because so often when you make these pilgrimages, you can find some horrible block of holiday units or a car park or fast food takeaway where you used to play.

Happily, our sleepy little fishing spot has escaped the worst of it since most of the development is taking place in newer areas up on the surrounding hills where the newcomers get fantastic ocean views. Not for them the convenience of living on the flats close to the lake and pulling their little rowboat down to the lake's edge to go fishing for the day as Grandfather used to do.

Driving on, we spent two nights in another little seaside town on the South Coast of NSW where we used to take our own kids for holidays ... There's a shortish, but lovely little river that links the ocean to the lakes -- just perfect for messing about in boats -- and we used to have a caravan right on the lawn that leads down to the water.

Can you imagine how peaceful it is, just messing about in boats here?

While we were sitting admiring the view and reminiscing, we spotted a figure dragging a tiny rowboat into the water on the other side of the river. As we watched, this figure began to row across to our side (where the few shops, the RSL club and main connecting road to civilisation are).

In a few minutes, we realised that this wasn't a fit young man rowing over, but rather a Lady in Her Prime, and she wasn't out for a bit of fishing, but was rowing over to do her shopping! You can see the green shopping bag in the photo here.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to be able to live such a hassle-free life? No road rage on your way to the shops, no racing to get the last parking spot, no exhaust fumes, no ... Well, you get the idea.

But I digress. We began talking about Nundle, and to Nundle we must now turn ...

When our daughter was 2 weeks old, my husband was transferred to a town in the New England region of NSW, and since our families were still around the Sydney area, we travelled up and down many times. Some years later, when we moved to Queensland, we used to drive the same stretch of road, and we had to look for ways to entertain the kids (as you do on long road trips). Games of "I Spy" etc wear thin very quickly I've found, so we started to read road signs and play guessing games about how long it would take to get to different places. The one place that stuck in our minds was Nundle ... Kids love words that have good sounds, and this was a word that appealed to them both. If you say it over and over (and over) it's also a delightfully silly word, which just added to its attraction.

The LoML is very good at making up games, and when the kids discovered Nundle, he set about using that as the basis for more games, and so it was that All Roads Lead to Nundle came into being.

It seemed that when we got close to this particular town, every sign for 50 km on either side would point to it, so we tried to come up with what we might find at Nundle ... just why did all roads lead to Nundle? What was at Nundle and what did Nundlians do all day?

In those days, we were always in a rush to get from place to place, and it was a long diversion off the highway to Nundle and back -- despite the number of ways we could get there -- so we never did turn off to satisfy our curiosity ... until this trip.

Drum roll, please, Mr Music ... drrrrrrrrr

I'm here to announce to the world that we've been to Nundle! 

And ...I have photographic evidence that all roads do, in fact, lead to Nundle. 

When you click on the link, you can also see what's at Nundle and what the Nundlians do with their time ...