The old Wool Road

GUM TREES LINE the roadside, their crowns shaking back and forth like giant pom-poms in the stiff southerly, enticing us along this strip of fresh bitumen that slices through a vast swathe of the Southern Tablelands of New South Wales. Unlike the ominous clouds that rush overhead, we’re in no hurry.

We’re travelling along the Wool Road, a historic 1841 bullock route hacked out of the ‘new country’ by 70 convicts to cart wool from the prosperous Monaro and Goulburn districts to Jervis Bay for shipping to Sydney and beyond.

Already an hour on the road, however, and the only stock we’ve spotted are grazing cattle and a few horses galloping along a rickety old fenceline…oh, and a couple of alpacas sheltering in a gully. With no