Gift

For those of you that don't know, Gift is a small town in the central west of New South Wales, Australia. It used to be an old Gold Mining town and flourished in the late 1800s, when the population rivaled many similar towns at the time. Many hotels were built and thrived with the influx of thousands of people hoping to make their fortune from the ground around the town. Some did - most didn't. I think it got its name from the "Gift" of gold in the surrounding hills.

Now it is just another sleepy town in the countryside with a population in the hundreds, not thousands. Most of the old hotels are shut down, or broken down, but the locals that are left keep the main street alive and looking as new as it did all those years ago. It almost looks like you could still ride in on horseback and tie your horse to the railing to continue on foot under the awnings that line the main street. The buildings have been turned into a cafe and a souvenir shop for the tourists and travelers who stop by on their way somewhere else but who get charmed by the quaint, old timey feel of the place. One of the old hotels remains and acts as a meeting place for locals and visitors alike, being the only pub and accommodation in the area.

Gift is in the middle of nowhere, away from the main highways in the area. It is bang smack in the middle of three major towns - about an hour's drive from each of them. So it doesn't get a lot of visitors, but those that do keep coming back and it tends to be a well kept secret destination for them to get away from the over crowded, over busy cities.

The locals are very friendly and very welcoming and, though the population is very small, there are many great characters there who make a big impression on anyone who stays a while. The place gets quite cool in the winter and the summers are hot and dry, but it is never uncomfortable. A perfect and very Australian place to spend some carefree time and get away from it all.