Crop forecasts

In the two trips covered in this blog for 2012 I have commented on surprising apparent increases in the amount of two crops:

• Cotton on the Hay Plain when going to Port Lincoln; and
• Canola on the Riverina trip.

When Gouldiae also commented on canola it was time to investigate.

The go-to organisation for crop forecasting is ABARE (if you wish to check detail you might have to search that site a bit as I did).  Note that the data for 2011-12 was calculated by me from 2012-13 numbers and % change.

Here is the data (Click to get a readable version):

This is chart for NSW (which is the area I am interested in).

Both correlation coefficients are pretty good so I am inclined to say that the apparent increase - at least in the medium term is real.  Although cotton is drooping a bit compared to the previous two years.  Presumably the continued increase in canola reflects the tough climate in the US this year.

Yanco ma chienne

I am sure you are all familiar with the phrase "Don't yank my chain" although the linked explanation is new to me!  That has nothing to do with this trip which is about a trip with our female dog (pensez-vous en Francais) to Yanco in the Riverina of New South Wales.  This is the latest effort in our project to visit every town in NSW.

As part of this we intend to check for War Memorials as the Register of War Memorials form the basis of the population we are are ticking off.  On this trip we discovered several commemorative artefacts that should be added to the Register (a joint endeavor of the State Library of NSW and the State Branch of the Returned Services League (RSL)), so feel we are adding purpose to our project, as well as adding content to the Register.

Other than providing an intro to the trip this post forms the index page which will hopefully make navigation easier for the general readership.  So here are the links to the individual posts.

NOTE:  The original links went into edit mode for reasons that are opaque to me.  Hopefully these work correctly.

• To Narrandera and Yanco
• Lee ton and Yanco
• Whitton, Griffith, Yenda and Binya State Forest
• Grong grong, Ganmain, Coolamon and Junee
• Yanco trip extra War memorial stuff
• Pubs of Yanco trip - images
• Plants of Yanco trip - images
• Birds of Yanco trip - list
• Yanco trip images of Birds

Grong grong, Ganmain, Coolamon and Junee

A fairly quick pack up around the house and then into Narrandera.  We didn't stop there, but did head out to look at the lake across the road to Barellan.  From the number of cars coming towards us the road was now open, although the spread of water across this area which was dry 2 years ago is most impressive.

Back to the highway and off to Grong grong.  This name apparently means "poor campground" in the language of the local indienous people.

As we drove up the main drag we noticed a Memorial Hall.  Despite the absence of this town from the Register of War Memorials there was one front and centre.  In the image it is just visible as a black line in the doorway.

While looking at this I thought I heard a muzzein.  Hang on, it isn't Friday and the mullah rarely refers to cowgirls (or barrel racing).  Yep we were just down the road from the Rodeo which kicked off at 8am.  Everyone seemed to be having a good time

I think the latter image should be titled "Homage to Thelwell" for any Pom readers!

Some of the cattle seemed to have been dissed more than somewhat by a small dog.

We also checked out the cemetery.  The most interest there was the way many of the graves had been rebuilt well after the interment they represented.

After taking a few snaps we headed into Ganmain.  Looking for War Memorials we found our way to St Brendan's Church.  While I went inside

looking for the memorial Father Mark spoke to Frances and then showed us where the memorial was. He then explained that a lot of the woodwork in the sanctuary had just been upgraded by a craftsman, using River Red Gum.  Father Mark was himself a craftsman making rosaries out of fly-fishing kit!  A great bloke and we wish him well in his job.

There were a few interesting shopfronts in the main street of Ganmain.

On the way into Coolamon we checked out a patch of Callitris woodland beside the road.  A few interesting plants as well as an infestation of Opuntia.  Carrying on down the road we passed by the village of Manaar where we couldn't find a memorial, but did find this interesting mural.

Coolamon was fascinating with a main street containing a range of historic buildings with a park in the middle.  My favourite building was the offices of a legal firm making much of it's century of work - under various names - for the litigation enthused members of the community.

 It is instructive to compare this sign with the one for the same flour product in Yenda yesterday.

Junee was quite good, once we got by having to wait twice for a monster train (I think of grain trucks) to go through crossings.  At the first crossing the gates were dysfunctional so they had reverted to fleshware to hold up the cars.

We did a historic walk

 When was the last time you saw a 2c coin?

and thought we'd extend it a tad and check St Lukes Anglican Church for memorials.  A couple of ladies were doing some work in the community centre adjoining the church and one of them offered to let me in to see the Honour rolls in the Church.  These are not in the Register but hopefully will be soon: many thanks nice lady!

Then merely roll on down the road for a couple of hours (plus a bit) and home.  Feeling knackered!

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Whitton, Griffith, Yenda and Binya State Forest

For some reason I felt somewhere South of ordinary when I woke this morning.  The weather had the same issue: rather than start nice and get crappy it cut to the chase and was a howling gale and cloud from the start.

Despite my physical state we headed off through Leeton towards Golgedrie Weir.  Once we turned off the main road towards Whitton we were driving through cotton country.  These guys mainly go for cuboid bales rather than the yellow rolls favoured further West.  Not much else to look at until we got to the Weir where we examined a sign requesting $2 each to enter.  We didn’t have a great problem with this but thought in view of the weather we’d pay our money and see zip so did a u-turn and headed off to Whitton.

This was a surprisingly interesting town with several preserved old buildings

 and very good interpretive signs.  The second one commemorates a former head of the Water Conservation and Irrigation Commission.

They had a nice memorial Park which was photographed for our official record.

As we had moved on a bit swiftly, we decided to vary our plans and go to check out Griffith rather than head for Barellan.  Griffith is the biggest town in the Riverina and seemed very prosperous.  The mythology is that it is the centre on some informal (and apparently inflammable) horticultural practices which might, explain some of the wealth.  Noting that such practices are not always universally endorsed might explain the number of very authoritarian signs around.

Neither of these explained the fact that the Regional Art Gallery was locked up despite a number of signs saying it should be open,  Apparently it was closed because their next exhibition opened that evening.   I pointed out to the folk at the Theatre (which is organizationally linked to the Gallery) that it would be a good idea to put a sign to this effect on the door!

There were many War Memorials around the place and it will be interesting to see how many additions I make.  Here are a couple of samples: the rest are in the special page.

The Memorial Hall

 Soldier-Settler Memorial

 Memorial to airmen

As we strolled up the street we passed the Council Offices where people were organizing the folk coming in to vote early for the Council Elections tomorrow.    This building is very modern, but I think the old Chambers are somehow embedded within it.

As Frances commented there seems to be a lot of interest in these elections judging by the number of folk handing out how to vote cards.  Possibly this reflects people’s awareness that if they just let the forces of evil (property developers. lawyers and other shady characters) get elected they’ll end up with very poor quality of life.

I could have made some money at this point since the workers all took much interest in Tammy sniffing at the placards and encouraging her to mark her territory on the opponent’s signs.  I did say I could arrange this but had to rush to catch up to Frances before anyone stumped up some folding material.

There were a few interesting public artworks around including a mosaic mural on the wall of the RSL

 and some mosaic works outside the Theatre at the top of the town.

Wandering back down the street we found a street stall selling bags of oranges and veggies on behalf of Legacy.  So we got a bag of navels and a huge cabbage!  Plus had a pleasant chat with the vendor about rabbit problems.

By and large I enjoyed Griffith (apart from the bossy signs) but it was time to move on.  The weather seemed to have improved a bit – mainly due to the shelter of the buildings I suspect - so we pointed ourselves at Binya State Forest.

Before we got there we passed Yenda which appeared to be a town so we swung in to see what was there.  A couple of good War Memorials (this one at the Diggers Club)

and some interesting old buildings, many of which looked to be falling into decrepidation. A friend in Carwoola has subsequently explained that this may be due to Mirrool Creek recently flooding the town to a depth of 1.5m!  This post explains how that happened.

Getting to Binya State Forest we headed off along the Binya Forest Drive.

It was excellent, as we were finally finding some flowering plants.  Here are a few samples with the whole set in a special post

Xerochrysum (plus ants).

Petalochilus fuscatus

There was quite a lot of Salvation Jane/ Paterson’s Curse around.  In places it was about 75cm tall, in the middle of the road.   There had been no obvious effort to control it.

Birding that starts with a Red-capped Robin is always good.  The other special was a flock of Apostlebirds.  They are of particular interest since I usually spend a lot of time looking – usually unsuccessfully – for them as we drive across the Mallee when going to and from Adelaide.  A Horsfield’s Bronze-cuckoo posed nicely. 

The road was good in places, dodgy (mainly where people with no brain and a big right foot had dug up the track in wet weather) in others and pretty much non-existent towards the end.  However we made it through with no real drama and (unlike last time I drove through here) didn’t puncture a tyre. 

A quick swing by Fivebough Swamp where the weather was really nasty and there were few birds around and on home, where the sun was setting

 On the way back to the house I noticed this sign at the start of town.  The use of an Ibis to represent the letter I is very nifty.

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Leeton and Yanco

For some reason the night seemed very warm.  Obviously the economy is going well somewhere judging by the number of trucks going past through the night.   A reasonable night’s sleep was had.

In view of my intention to run a marathon in about 5 weeks time  felt I had to keep some running going.  The problem is that I normally waddle at mid-day which is not convenient when travelling.  So 6:45 saw me pounding along beside the canal on the Southern edge of town.  The great advantage of this is that the road is rather flat!  It was quite cool which also made it pleasant.  Several birds were added to the trip list including Rufous Songlarks which I haven’t seen in Canberra yet this season.

Meanwhile back at the Ranch breakfast was prepared.  Peter had kindly provided some bacon and eggs for us – now that is hospitality.  The problem was the eggs were from local chooks who go in for hard shells.  They required some force to crack, such that we thought they might have already been boiled!

We then went for the heritage walk around Yanco.   Frances commented that many of the buildings listed therein were described as “The former …” suggesting that the place was declining.  To our eyes that didn’t seem to be the case many of the houses seemed quite recently built and all seemed pretty well maintained.  It was basically an enjoyable walk.   The line of Palm Trees in the main street were very impressive.  

There were also lots of ibis (3 species) and Cattle Egrets in a paddock at the top of the town.

Next step was to investigate a few birding places to the South of Yanco.  The first of these was described as Yanco Reserve.   It had a nice collection of Acacia trees and sme eucalypts but an awful lot of weeds and rubbish.  We couldn’t scarf up any babblers, but did see a brilliant male Mistletoebird and a Yellow-throated Miner.

Next stop was Euroley bridge which delivered Superb Parrots, inspecting hollows.  Flushed with that success we headed off to Yanco Weir, to which I have noted road signs every time we drove to Adelaide (on average once a year for the last 30 years!).  To my great surprise we hit the Sturt Highway!  It turned out a crucial road sign was missing.  When we got back to the weir it turned out to be on Yanco Creek rather than the Murrumbidgee and the area was devoid of birds and flowering plants.  Damn: but at least we have now been there.

By this stage the wind had really picked up and cloud had come in.  After a great start to the day it had got rather unpleasant.

Then in to Leeton and out to Tuckerbill Swamp.  On previous efforts I have never quite found Tuckerbill and it is rather hidden but this time we got there.  It is behind an Historic Area (some indigenous folk are buried there) which meant from the weird ‘thinking’ which pervades the NSWPWS that dogs were banned.  So I left Tammy with Frances and whizzed off to look over the Swamp.  It is a huge area and I could only see a bit of it, where no Brolgas were evident.  I did see a brilliant male Red-capped Robin.

After a bit of touring around in the car (seeing our first Pied Butcherbird of the trip and getting a nice photo of a Nankeen Kestrel) 

we headed back into Leeton to do the Historic walking tour.  The town’s 2 claims to fame area lot of art deco buildings (from the 1930s) and the involvement of Walte Burley Griffin in laying the place out.  We discovered at least one additional War memorial  - which I couldn’t  photograph because the sunlight reflected off the gilt lettering too severely.  Basically a very pleasant stroll.  Surprisingly both the Catholic

 and Anglican

churches were open so we got a look into both.

Very different as would be expected from their being built some 40 years apart, but both were architecturally interesting.  Again the Anglican Church had a Roll of Honour for the War Dead and the Catholic one didn’t.  Why is this so?

An intriguing sight on this walk was the pile of pigeon droppings around the guttering of the Convent supporting the Catholic School.  

I had noticed other evidence of pigeon poop in Narrandera and Feral pigeons seem to be in large numbers in Yanco.  Perhaps the local rice farms encourage them in some way?

The highlights of the walk for me were the Roxy Theatre 

 and the (Walter) Burley Griffin water towers.

We then circled Fivebough Swamp which has had problems in the past due to limited water.  After the last two years it is brimming (the Cattle sign is usually some distance from the water's edge, let alone half inundated)

and many of the areas of the Swamp are still flooded, including the main entrance.

We added a few species to the trip list, but failed to locate any Brolgas.  There was some doubt about whether we could take Tammy into the area but a local birder assured us we could so we did, and then had a very interesting chat with said birder about what is going on with management of the area (of which I can’t remember the details, but it seemed to me the forces of good - and particularly cattle - were winning).  Our friend commented that some people in the area are concerned about what will happen when the snow melts in the Alps: as most of the hydro dams are already full this could lead to another surge of water down rivers already running a banker!

Back to the shops to get a large serve of prawns for our evening meal and thus earn a 8c/l fuel voucher!  On the way back to the house an attempt was made to acquire some local oranges.  

There seems to be no concept of the roadside stall selling bags for $2 (as in the SA Riverland) and the two places with signs up advertising fruit sales were closed.

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