What a cold, cold day it was today in the Maitland area. This was our first real 'winter' day & for the first time, last summer seemed to be just a distant memory. The wind was blowing around 40kph & some gusts reaching over 50 kph. This really plummeted the mercury to just 13 deg (C) & with the wind chill, it felt like 0 deg (C).
But it was the wind, it was blowing that hard it would blow the milk out of your tea!
So at lunch time, armed with my Canon 400D camera & a couple of sandwiches I drove up to historic Morpeth for to check out some photographic opportunities.
Morpeth was established as a major river town in 1821 to service the burgeoning rural industries that were thriving on the Hunter River. It was due
to the expansion of Maitland & Morpeth on the Hunter River as major rural centres that hastened the closure of Newcastle as a convict centre in 1823. Today, as you walk down the original stone paved paths along Swan Street past the historic buildings & down to the beautiful Morpeth bridge (built in 1898, it is the oldest remaining example of an overhead braced Allan truss road bridge in service) you can catch a glimpse of what life in a 19th century river town must have been like. However, with siltation of the river & the arrival of rail, the life of the river port was doomed. So from around 1890 Morpeth's fate was sealed as commerce (& the money) moved to Maitland & Newcastle.
The only problem I had all day was the weather, but it is winter & it is that time of year when you can get a little hoarse.
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