A brief visit to Johville

The view this morning was enlivened by the steam (or smoke, I am not sure of the technology) from the Condong Sugar Mill hitting a temperature inversion about 100m up. 

Before getting to the topic of the title I’ll just record that at noon the external temperature recorded in the car at Tweed Heads was 19 degrees and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Then I heard the weather in Canberra: 6 degrees and the rain expected to stop by evening. Yes!!!!!

It was a brief visit to the next State to the North, Oh my goodness, yes, don’t you worry about that!  Just long enough to record 6 species of birds for my Queensland list for 2011.  The drive along Tomewin Rd towards Currumbin was quite interesting, and I could certainly see the attraction of the road for the weekend warriors on 2 wheels.  If I felt like working I think I’d open a stall selling new foot-pegs for motorbikes at one end of the road, and franchise someone to do the same at the other. 

Fortunately for the sake of the Subaru I had a passenger who doesn’t like being chucked around (I must get the full race seat belts fitted sometime and throw these pussy inertia-reel jobbies away).  There is also the potential for Chunderpooch to revisit us which is another reason to take it gently on steep and winding roads.  At one point we noted a sign to ‘Bains Rd: formerly Rainforest Glen’.  Obviously Mr Bain had fixed up that naughty rainforest!  Shortly after this we saw a cyclist getting in shape on a 10% grade.  Then we hit the 14% grade he’d already conquered !

So after getting to Currumbin we didn’t go and get Lorikeet guano all over us but hit the Pacific Highway and headed for Tweed Heads, back in NSW and the 21^st Century (CE - I’m not sure about other cultures’ timetables). 

We started with a couple of walks recommended in the Tweed birders pamphlet.  The first was along part of the estuary system covering a boardwalk and a dirt road.  The highlight of this was an Osprey – my first for some time.  We next went to an area off Vintage Drive.  As we went in the names of the streets – all types of wine – seemed familiar and then daylight dawned: we had been to this spot in 2008 on our way back from Brisbane.  Still good as we added a couple of simple birds (Black Swan and Coot) to the trip list.

We then decided to find our way to an Aldi store in South Tweed Heads.  The main problem was that one of our maps only showed about half the roads (and some of the names were out of date) while the other one only showed half the area.  This meant we took a fair tour of the area, but eventually got where we needed to go. However we got there.   Coming back a surprise right lane turn caught me out and we spent some time touring the largest and most confusing set of roadworks in creation.  I think this must be some sort of test to keep undesirables from migrating from Queensland: it was much better signed to get to Brisbane than anywhere else.

Eventually we made it to the road to Fingals Head where we took a signed track to the beach.  This was the perfect beach: wide, gently sloping clean sand, beautiful surf rolling in and about 6 other folk on the 5km of sand!  Dogs allowed!  Just before we got to the turn-round point (ie close to a couple of other folk and about 1.5km from where we hit the beach) we saw some dolphins surfing.  One of them did a complete aerial off the top of a wave!

Frances had noticed a lighthouse on top of a headland so we decided to visit it.  It was a great spot- dogs welcome on leads on a great walk though a bit of forest (picking up Bar-shouldered Dove en route). 

 Several folk were on the headland watching the Humpback Whales disporting themselves as they migrate to Hervey Bay.  We saw quite a few spouts, several tailfins and a reasonable collection of breaches.  As we headed back to the car we saw more dolphins. 

As well as this the area was signed to the Giants Causeway: not quite as spectacular as (I am led to believe) the place in Ireland (apparently the Scottish end of that formation is part of Fingal's Cave: thanks Rob for the correction) but the guy fishing off the top was going to have trouble getting off as his escape route had waves breaking over it. 

Other fishermen were not as daft.

On getting home I gathered some material to light my fire (in the slow combustion stove) when I spotted someone in the valley doing a better job.  To my surprise it had died down in about 15 minutes (and no one else lit up after dark, drat it).