Trip to Cowra

The trip to Cowra from Sydney was suppose to be 4 hours and 20 minutes but because of traffic jams, it turned out to be 5 hours! It always bit busy around Kattomba and there were roadworks.

It was such a warm day so perfect for the festival.....except all the Sakura (Cherry Blossoms) were finished already!!



It must have been very warm in Cowra in this spring. It looked like Sakura finished about 2 weeks ago. So I was bit disappointed with that but still enjoyed the garden.

Cowra Japanese garden is the biggest Japanese style garden in Southern hemisphere. There were many native Japaneses plants, rocks and beautiful water features.





The entertainments at the festival included demonstration of Japanese sports(ie Aikido) and music. I was expecting to see large varieties of Japaneses style gifts in the garden's gift shop but there wasn't much.

After visiting the festival, I went to Cowra POW camp and the cemetery for Japanese hostages. The cemetery was very quiet. It was very peaceful. Many of the grave stone had age of hostages and some of them were very young. It made me cry. If they didn't have a mind set of being hostage is a stigma, they would have survived.

I spent one night in a town. It was the first time for me to stay in a motel!! I wasn't expecting much but a room was clean and all the necessary amenities were there so it turned out to be ok.

A funny thing was, on the way back to Sydney, I stopped over in a town called Leura. And they seemed to have a lot more Sakrua than Cowra. And it was still blossoming!  It was probably because Leura is colder than Cowra(I coould be wrong)

In the end, I was very glad that I finally went to Cowra after living in NSW for 5 years and I had a good time. It was worth it!