With the week off work, we decided to spend the day taking a drive out into the countryside. My wife and I took Scully for a drive to Berrima, a nice little “day-tripper” village a couple of hours south-west, in the Southern Highlands region.
We arrived about 11:00 and spent some time looking at the various handicrafts and foodie shops.
Many of the buildings in Berrima are very old and heritage listed. There’s an old sandstone courthouse and a prison where they kept convicts back in the early 19th century. To go along with this old-timey feel, there are a couple of antiques shops. We went in one and looked around. There were rooms full of stuff older than me. And then in one room I spotted something a little incongruous for an “antique shop” – see if you can spot it:
We stopped in at the Berrima Vault House for lunch. This is a restaurant housed in a heritage building built in 1844 by convict labourers, originally to house convicts. A waiter gave us a guided tour of the place before we had lunch, showing us several basement rooms with barred windows, that were used to house convicts. There was also a tunnel leading from the basement directly to the old courthouse across the road.
Besides the history, the food was good! I had a baked red snapper fillet for lunch:
followed by elderflower pannacotta with poached pears:
After lunch we drove back home via a different route, heading east to the coast through Macquarie Pass, which is a beautiful scenic winding road down a steep mountainside through lush forest. We got home just before dinner time, after a total driving distance of 320 km. A great day out!
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