The region in which we live and work will look even better when you start to look at it through the eyes of a tourist rather than a resident. 

And, with people working longer hours and taking fewer holidays, staycations are becoming increasingly popular. A staycation involves staying in your region and exploring what it has to offer. 

The charming town of Molong is a gem which is steeped in history and a visit to this old-world centre should be on everyone’s Central West NSW bucket list. At the top of that list would be a visit to The Yarn Market Craft Cottage and Cobb & Co Coach House.

The Craft Cottage is situated next to the Village Green in the National Trust classified main street of Molong.

The 90 members of the Yarn Market Association are always busy producing quilts, knitwear, baby goods, wooden toys and carvings, bead work, patchwork, paintings and pottery, jams, pickles, biscuits and local Cudal honey. “We have everything here,” Yarn Market Association member Barbara Strong said. “This is a wonderful place for passing travellers to stop and pay a visit.”

Of particular interest to day trippers should be the 14 foot long, seven foot high Bicentennial Embroidered Screen of Molong, accommodated in the 1875 Cobb & Co Coach House.

“It took the ladies four years to embroider the screen and it is just magnificent,” Mrs Strong said.

Sixty ladies and five men worked hundreds of hours on the artwork. Farmers donated wool and mohair and the ladies spun the wool and hand dyed with berries, grasses and bark. 

The historic Cobb & Co Coach House building will take visitors back in time with timbers from the original woolshed at Larras Lake, bricks from the old butter factory and beautiful original sandstone and bluestone walls. 

“Molong is a quaint town, with a diverse mix of young and old who are exceptionally friendly,” Mrs Strong said.

“The Creek ambles through town and it is home to a resident family of platypus. If you’d like to get up nice and early and lay quietly on the bank, you may be lucky enough to see them. They are quite cheeky.”

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You can spend hours wandering the leafy streets, admiring the many colonial buildings, looking for bargains in the antique shops, stocking up at Sweetness Your Lolly Shop, pausing for morning tea at the cafes, stopping for lunch at one of the great pubs or enjoying a picnic in the Village Green.

History buffs will also appreciate a stop at the gravesite of Yuranigh, a Wiradjuri Aboriginal who was the invaluable right-hand man of explorer and surveyor Sir Thomas Mitchell.