MYSTERY bus tours are keeping a group Canowindra senior citizens mentally young.
Subscribe now for unlimited access to all our agricultural news
across the nation
or signup to continue reading
The men of the town, the Golden Oldies, and the women, the Happy Wanderers, go on outings each month to neighbouring towns.
Bill Coady is on the men's organising committee while his wife Lorna is on the women's committee.
The monthly tours are run through the local health centre and the buses are supplied by the local rugby club and Lyndon House rehabilitation centre.
The buses leave the health centre at 9am and return by 3pm so the tours are limited to a 60km radius.
For $20 each trip, the 25 to 30 retired men who take part are given morning tea and lunch, and entry into a museum, if that's on the itinerary.
And they might have a few beers in a small town hotel where they have lunch.
On a recent trip to Koorawatha the publican opened up the hotel just for the Golden Oldies and supplied lunch.
Other visits have included the Parkes Telescope, museums and wineries.
"It gets the men out of the house," Mr Coady said.
"It's just an outing for them and they are mystery tours because if we tell them where they're going or they will say they've been there already and they won't come."
Mr Coady, who occasionally drives the bus as well as plans the routes with other committee members, said he enjoyed hearing the tales both tall and true.
"We went out to Wyangala Dam through Darby's Falls and one man was telling us about the bushranger Johnny Vane's hut in the area," he said.
"We never did find the hut."
Vane was a member of the notorious Ben Hall's gang.
The Happy Wanderers women's club operates along similar lines and both run raffles to raise money.
Mrs Coady said her group included some women using walking frames or living with dementia.
"It's amazing how many people in town live on their own," she said.
"We thought if the men can do it (run the bus trips), how come the women can't," she said.
"It gets us out of the house and socialising."
The Happy Wanderers' trips cost $25 and include morning tea and lunch. They also stop for a meal in a club or a hotel.
Outings include visits to nurseries, craft shops or the cinema at Manildra. Once they visited an exquisite thread-work exhibition but it's never a trip purely for shopping.
"One time it rained and we couldn't get out for morning tea so we told jokes - everyone knew one," Mrs Coady said.
"There is real talent there in the oldies - storytellers and singers.
"The social side is really good for them."
She said part of the fun was going about on back roads.
"Sometimes people say, 'I've lived here all my life and never been on this road'."
Mrs Coady and many of the other women are also actively involved in the hospital auxiliary and meet regularly for afternoon tea.
Always busy, she and her husband also work at the town's Vinnies store.
