Tom Roberts painted Bailed up to typify, as he said ...the early days of New South Wales in the bushranging era. We visited the place where he painted the picture's landscape background. Roberts moved the canvas to a studio in Inverell to add the coach and horses, and then out to Newstead to finish the figures. He worked on the picture between 1893 and 1895, and repainted parts of the background in 1927.
 

Everyone on the bus had postcards of the paintings whose sites we visited. People joked and chatted as they held up their pictures, and argued about where the platform of bush poles built for the painter's easel had stood.
 

The landscape is much as Tom Roberts depicted it. The modern road has a slightly different alignment, but the treed slopes are familiar.
      The Tom Roberts Festival began with a piece of open-air theatre on this site. People gathered to see a performance that interpreted the Aboriginal people of the area, the European invasion, the bushranger's hold-up in the 1860s, Tom Roberts's nostalgic 1890s painting, and other events before and after. A real Cobb & Co coach was the centrepiece, and descendents of the people who posed for Tom Roberts played parts in the performance. (I'm sorry I missed it).
     In the photo, on the left, is the replica painter's platform built for the performance.