“On a showery, freezing morning we all travelled to Canowindra where we wandered around the town inspecting various shops and attractions, stopping for morning tea at “The Taste”, before heading to “The Age of Fishes Museum”. This is a museum built especially to highlight the discovery near Canowindra, of fish fossils that existed before the age of the dinosaur. After that it was out to” Toms Waterhole Winery” for wine tasting and a lunch featuring homemade bread, cheese, pickles, olives etc. A Coolamon Rotary banner was presented to the winery proprietors to hang on their wall for future visitors to see. From there we headed on to “The Falls Retreat”, a winery with 500 acres of grapes and a very impressive resort featuring a heated indoor pool, full beauty salon, massage tables, spray tanning room, and many more features, too numerous to mention.
After breakfast the next morning we all travelled to The Japanese gardens to see a very beautiful and well presented garden that remembers the POW camp and the Japanese inmates that were interred there during the Second World War. From there it was a short trip to see the relics of the actual site of the POW camp that housed Japanese, Italian, Chinese, Korean and Indonesian Prisoners of War. This was also the site of the “breakout” by Japanese POW,s on the 5th August 1944 that resulted in the deaths of 231 Japanese POW’s and 4 Australian military guards.”
{As told by the escapees.}
Henk and Maureen Hulsman, Ray and Maria Foley, Max and Sue Chapman, Ian Durham and Christine Lorraine as well as Marg and Garth Perkin.
