On the road to Canberra you have a few choices. One is to maintain warp speed (if one can refer to a mere 110km/h (approx. 68mph) as such) down the Hume Highway / F5. Another is to swing the wheel to the left and take a detour south along the Old Hume Highway which is now a tourist drive leading to the Southern Highlands town of Mittagong, Bowral and Moss Vale before rejoining the F5 around Sutton Forest.

I often used to do the latter until around September 2010 when I briefly dated a Mittagong resident who I neeeeeever want to lay eyes on again. That's still true but since by 2023 I barely remember her name and recall nothing of her appearance it's also immaterial. Such is the charm of the villages that by March 2012 I decided that it was time to take another look at the Southern Highlands hamlets.

Not a lot had changed since my previous visits, not that much ever does in these parts. Granted when I was last there a 4 story building was being constructed opposite the railway station, but that was never completed (having been foreclosed upon by the mortgagee) and by 2012 sat as a half-completed eye sore. (Edit 2023: It remained that way until at least early 2018. By September 2020 it had become a rather appealing apartment block.)

The rest of Mittagong was mostly as I recalled it, though. If you were doing an Antipodean version of Midsommer Murders, this place would certainly be in contention for the part of one of the villages. You can walk through the bulk of the township end to end in about 15 minutes (and ignoring photo op time, we did). The local clothing store, Whytes, proudly bears the logo "You Can Face The World When Dressed By Whytes", which did have me checking my watch to confirm that it's 2012 and not 1962. However of course that's part of the charm of the place. Gen Xers would be bored out of their brains here with the closest thing to excitement being the model train exhibit in Braemar, an even smaller township that you pass through between the freeway and Mittagong. (Edit 2023: That exhibit moved with the business that ran it (All Aboard) to Bowral in 2021. The only remaining vestige of it is an old railway signal that was mounted in the yard alongside the road.)

However if you wanted to just decompress I suppose there are worse places... except for the small problem that when you check out the local accommodation on TripAdvisor you see that most of it is rated just one notch above "This Place Bites, Big Time".

(Edit 2023: It's less extreme these days; there are a few places that look somewhat appealing though there still seems to be a lot of mediocrity.)

This shot was taken outside the church on Main Street, which is what this stretch of the Old Hume Highway is referred to as locally. It gives an indication of the general vibe of the town. As I said, not a place that would be amiss in Midsommer.

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