If you're trundling through the centre of Braidwood during the wee hours of the Christmas holiday period, wind down the car window and have a good, long whiff.
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Chances are you'll catch the glorious aroma of baking pies.
Between Boxing Day and the new year, the ovens at Braidwood Bakery will be churning out an average 4000 pies a day to help feed the hungry hordes of travellers, most of them making the traditional holiday pilgrimage to the South Coast and needing a quick, filling feed en route.
"The first shift will come in and start the baking preparation for the following day about 10pm [and] three more bakers and pastry chefs come in at 6am," proprietor John Woodman says.
"By then we're getting really busy out back and customers are already coming in the front door."
Due to oven capacity, there's a physical limit as to how many pies the premises can produce. Throw hundreds of loaves of bread as well as danishes, pastries, muffins and other sundry baked goodies into the mix and it's little wonder that, over the holidays, the Braidwood ovens never cool down.
The smaller Dojo bakery, just around the corner, experiences exactly the same level of demand - but on a smaller scale.
"It's a crazy busy time for most of the businesses in Braidwood, there's no doubt," Mr Woodman says.
"But it's good for the town because most businesses are just like us; the people who work here are mostly locals and much of the money that comes into the town stays in the town."
Quality and consistency, he says, are the keys to keeping travellers coming back to his bakery.
"With the big volumes that we are producing, it's super important to maintain quality," he says.
"We're also lucky to have years of data in place to help us predict the quantities we will need to produce for certain upcoming peak periods, such as Christmas-New Year, with a pretty good degree of accuracy.
"This helps keep down the wastage."
The build-up of customers steps up another notch when the ACT school holidays begin, then hits its peak in the short break between Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
The downside for holiday travellers on the Kings Highway is the lengthy traffic tailback which often occurs on the approach to Braidwood, with the daytime crawl into the town known to stretch as far west as the racecourse.
NSW Roads and Maritime Services says the average daily traffic volumes on the highway of 4000 vehicles per day "can almost double" during holiday periods, and traffic management will be in place during peak periods.
Such is the flood of cars coming east down the highway, and the need for that traffic to give way to vehicles travelling north from Batemans Bay on the Princes Highway, that between 9am and 5pm from December 21 to December 29 traffic controllers will be in place at the roundabout where the two major highways meet.
Traffic speeds on the Kings Highway will be reduced to 80km/h between Nelligen and this roundabout from December 21 to January 2.
To help keep the traffic flowing, the 40km/h roadworks speed restriction which has been in place at the new Nelligen Bridge construction site will be lifted to 80km/h. Work at the bridge site has been suspended until January 7, when stop/slow operations will start again in each direction.
Police and the NSW roads authorities are encouraging all motorists during the holiday period to plan their journey, stay alert, and be patient.
