Onwards to Mullaway

On waking I went to take Tammy for a walk.  Drat: the sky doth micturate (isn’t it interesting that micturate is OK but a word meaning the same, but beginning with ‘p’is rude?).  What is it about short words?

Breakfast (definitely in the gourmet category) was enlivened by conversation with Laraine and Colin (our hosts) and another two guests.  Much amusement was generated by trying to sort out what would happen if Tammy and the other two guest-dogs (a Ridgeback and a Wiener-dog) got together.  The answer was going to be “apocalyptic devastation” so separation was enforced.  A great start to the day. 

The rain continued until we got almost to Kempsey where we refuelled: again over 33mpg!  Interestingly we were told where the discount petrol stations were by a cop who gave me an RBT (I passed, as I would hope to after only 1 glass of red last night – and none for breakfast today).  The other intriguing factor about the Kempsey area was the number of Cattle Egrets around the paddocks in the flood plain (a bit of foreshadowing there in the use of the word ‘flood’): possibly because this was the first area where we had been able to see paddocks rather than bush!

The driving was quite easy apart from the activities of a caravan-towing driver who drove at 10kph below the limit on 2 lane and 10kph over the limit on overtaking lanes.  Ban the van – or allow RPG launchers on other vehicles!  The only mentally ugly roadworks (physically/visually there is no other form of roadworks) were from Sapphire to Woolgoolga where we were limited to 80kph for (a) 10kms and (b) no apparent reason.  Obviously as it was a Saturday no-one was working.

As we drove along we heard a weather forecast.  It was talking about a flood warning for the North Coast.  Oops: we are not heading South!  The forecaster then said something along the lines of “This forecast is probably conservative” and mentioned 40 –70mm Sunday and 30-40mm each for Monday and Tuesday.  Oh poop.  (Watching TV in the evening the weatherperson singled out Coffs Harbour for mention of thunderstorms! But we are about 15km North of Coffs so perhaps it won’t affect us?)

We found the letting agent and the house and got into it.  The back yard is basically dog fenced but I suspect Tam could find her way out.  The place seems great and the surroundings just what I wanted with a nice dog-allowed beach and some nice heathland to check out.  Some of the Melaleucas are very photogenic as were the Pandanus tectorius (Screw pine) fruits

and the banksias.

We will now have a commercial break.  We were lent, by a naturalist friend, a copy of “Noosa’s Native Plants” by Stephanie Haslam.  Although we are a fair few km South of Noosa we were told this was going to be very helpful and such has proven to be the case.   We also have with us “Ocean Shores to Desert Dunes” by David Keith which covers the native vegetation formations of NSW and the ACT.  As well as describing the vegetation and the soils and situations in which they are found it also gives typical species.  So I am hopeful that by melding these two sources of information we’ll know a bit more about what we are looking at.  A future post on my main blog may cover more on this topic.

After traversing the beach – no signs about banning dogs (Great Lakes Shire please note) – the walk took us on a good bitumen path around a headland.  The only other folk we saw at this stage were three young blokes rock fishing below the cliff.  This may correlate with the memorial sign to “a great dad” at the top of the cliff.  As we came back (since rain seemed imminent) we met the three young persons, each carrying two or three fish, described as “only tailor”.  Since we had seen the remains of a tuna (ie a metre long fish, missing the fillets)

on the beach I could understand the inclusion of ‘only’.   Shortly thereafter we saw, and heard a member of the local intelligentsia doing burnouts with a ute.  The first mild negative for the area!

Getting back to the beach we saw a young woman with two big dogs there. Tammy was hot to go and discuss issues with them, but it didn’t happen: given the relative size of footprints that was probably a good thing!

Several birds were added to the trip list (now at 32) including Torresian Crows and Australian Gannet.  These and 9 other species also did some good for my year list.  A very pleasant evening ensued watching the huge plasma TV with Austar access.