Griffith NSW – Tagalong22

About Griffith

Griffith is a little piece of Italy in the heart of the Riverina. It still has the extraordinary statistic that 60% of the city’s population have Italian ancestors and it still celebrates Italian culture with extensive vineyards in the region, providores in the town selling local produce, and excellent cafes and restaurants where the pasta and coffee can be favourably compared to the best that Sydney (and Italy) can offer. Today the city’s dominant Italian culture has been enriched by substantial populations of Tongans, Samoans, Afghanis, Indians and Aborigines.

Griffith emerged out of the construction of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area (MIA) in the early years of the twentieth century. The irrigation channels, and the regular supply of water through the hot summer months, have made the area surrounding the town a major producer of rice, citrus fruits (valencia oranges are the largest crop), stone fruits, vegetables, wheat, cotton, sheep, wool, eggs and canola. Amusingly all of the gherkins used by McDonald’s are also grown in the district. Inevitably Griffith has had strong associations with marijuana growing and the activities of the ‘Griffith mafioso’ reached such a level in the 1970s that local anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay was mysteriously “disappeared”, presumed murdered. Griffith was designed by the American architect and town planner, Walter Burley Griffin, and its central feature is the broad, attractive main street with a wide median strip and a impressive park. At the top of the main street are two circular roads. This radial design echoes Griffin’s famous design for Canberra. (sourced from the Aussie Towns website – click for more).

Getting there – Coleambally stopover

It’s a fairly short 132km drive from Jerilderie (route map) but along the way we pulled into the town of Coleambally to check out their unique water tower and street art. Both were very impressive; we debated the shape of the water tower and couldn’t agree on being a wine glass, schooner or a mortar bomb. Its mosaic depicts the history and amenities of Coleambally. 24½ metres in height, with a capacity of over 1 million litres, it is filled from two deep bores and is the towns water supply. The street art is in the form of a giant Brolga (just in front of the water tower) as well as some unique lizards in the median strips made from welded chains.

Chain Goanna
Chain Goanna
Water tower base
Water tower base
Water tower
Water tower base
Water tower base
Water tower
The Brolga
The Brolga

Accommodation

Arriving at the Griffith Tourist Caravan Park (maplink) we were a bit disappointed as it looked pretty run down, but a young couple had just taken it over with a huge project ahead to get it up to scratch. We had 3 days to spend exploring what Griffith had to offer before moving on to Cobar.

Around Griffith

The Hermits Cave

The Hermit’s Cave is well worth a visit – perched high on the ridge of Scenic Hill, part of the McPherson Ranges, it offers a fabulous view across irrigated farmland to the Binya Hills and Cocoparra National Park in the distance.

The cave was once the home of Valerio Ricetti, a miner from Broken Hill who lived the life of a hermit in his cave on Scenic Hill for many years from 1929 to 1952. A keen gardener, Valerio transformed the rocky escarpment and created dry-stone-walls, paths and stone steps creating access to areas that he called, the Garden, the Chapel and the Main Cave. The walls of the Main Cave feature paintings of small daisies, created by Ricetti. Read more on Wiki p edia

De Bortoli Winery

We then took a trip out to the De Bortoli Winery in Bilbul (maplink) for a bit of a tasting. Our host, Dominique, provided the wine tasting, making our visit very enjoyable and interesting. We ended up purchasing some whites and a bottle of their Old Boys 21 Years Barrel Aged Tawny (yum!).

Centenary Sculptures at IOOF Park

Griffith celebrated 100 years of progress in 2016. The Centenary Celebrations hinged around the 17 day International Sculpture Symposium, which was held during May. Seven of the world’s best hard stone sculptors converged on Griffith to transform 20 tonnes of granite into beautiful pieces of public art. The granite sculptures, which reflect the theme ‘Griffith’s cultural diversity and the meaning of water’ are located on Centenary Walk, in the IOOF Park in Kookora Street (maplink). This is really cool and well worth a visit.

#1 Wine & Orange Blossom

Whitton Malt House

While we were at the De Bortoli Winery we asked our host about other places to visit and she suggested we check out the Whitton Malt House (about 48kms south of Griffith), so off we went and found it to be a pretty amazing place, only having been created in 2020.

The Malthouse is truly amazing with accommodation, a man-made lake where you can fish (catch & release Murray Cod), a special golf course where you pitch at targets in the lake (pretty cool), some great metal art – especially the horse created from all sorts of metal objects from spanners, cutlery, machinery parts, chains etc. This is just an add-on to the wonderful distillery and function centre which is the jewel in the crown.

Make sure that you pay the Malthouse a visit if you’re ever in the area – totally well worth it!

Sculpture by Tobias Bennett

Some friendly Parrots

On our last afternoon here we discovered the source of the crap over our car; it was a pair of beautiful Australian Ringneck Parrots. They were eating the fruit on the tree next to our van and after 1 chew the fruit was discarded onto the car, before the next piece of fruit was chosen. They were forgiven as they were so beautiful – so I just moved the car. The sunset that evening was also pretty special with a nice orange sky.

Summing up…

Accommodation – Griffith Tourist Caravan Park (02) 6964 2144
- Cost per night – $30.00 (@ 17-July-2022)
- Stayed for – 3 nights
- Facilities – Pretty poor – need a lot of work
- CP Location – 919 Willandra Ave Griffith NSW
- Our rating/score – 4/10
Was it a nice town to visit? – Yes
- Activities & places of interest – Plenty to do
- Tourist info centre? – 1 Jondaryan Avenue Griffith
- Would we return? – Probably not – been there & done that
- We rate the town – 7/10
Overall thoughts – Not a bad town to visit and we really enjoyed taking in the places of interest. If we were to stay here again we’d pick another caravan park as this one was pretty run down; however – a young couple have only recently taken over the park and we wish them luck updating it to a better one.