As we left
Carwoola the weather was a brilliant Spring day. Passing Yass it was still excellent with
glorious wattles of unidentified species lining the road and the paddocks
green.
Somewhere round about Gundagai I
noticed that the wattles, while still brilliant were whipping about a bit: the
promised front was on its way.
The one
blot on the trip to this stage was the health of the small dog. She seemed to be a tad bilious so the start
of the trip could be titled the Return of Chunderpooch. Fortunately she settled down. What didn’t settle down were the lambs in the
paddocks we passed: they were gamboling all over the place. “What would Mary Stuart do?” Answer at the foot of the post. There was still a lot of water around and the
canola crops were lurid.
So we
rolled on down the road sitting on a very relaxed speed. Became frustrated with 2 minute delays for
roadworks here and there. One place we
measured had the lights 400n fom the start of the works, which were about 50m
in length, but we had to wait 5 minutes.
At another set the only workers in site were slouching back against
their machines – apparently stacking a few zs.
There was also the usual crawl through Wagga 15km of drudgery – I
hesitate to think how much a bypass would cost: it will clearly only happen
after the Pacific Highway is upgraded.
Whatever. We got to Narrandera in
a tad over 4 hours with 30.7mpg.
Our first
activity was a comfort stop, where I discovered that the local youth had been part of an art project. Possibly led by Kilroy.
We next did a walk around the town, giving attention to War Memorials (I have
done a special post for these). The
first was the Tiger Moth Memorial in Narrandera Park commemorating the guys who
trained to fly here during WWII.
We had
some doubt if this was really a War Memorial then I found a plaque
commemorating all those who died. Later
I found the War Graves in the Cemetery of which a high proportion seemed to be
the airmen who had died in training accidents!
The walk
around town was very pleasant, although we only did part. Lots of the dwellings were old and
attractive,
The Churches had interesting architecture (but if they are locked I
am not going to publicise them) and some of the businesses were still historic. The banks were in old buildings and still
seemed to be banks which is unusual: in most country towns they have become
lawyers offices or such like.
Most of the
recognised War Memorials are in a linear park in the centre of town. One of the best – a ceramic fountain - had
been vandalized but subsequently rebuilt.
We then
went to Narrandera Wetland just off the Newell Highway beside the
Murrumbidgee. This is a most excellent
spot with lots of birds, several hides (blinds for Norte Americanos) and a good
lot of information. This sign was well executed using the metal silhouette style which seems very popular.
Avian highlights were
Yellow-billed Spoonbills. Reading a
brochure since, the Wetlands have a primary purpose of cleaning up, by natural
processes, the storm water before it hits the Murrumbidgee.
We then went to Narrandera Common to see what was in flower. The answer seems to be weeds: we only photographed two species, neither of which we could identify from our knowledge or our book! This one was pretty.
We then
found our way to the Cemetery. The first
point to note is that by this time, the weather was struggling to achieve
‘social disease’ rating. 10/10 cloud,
howling gale and odd raindrops. A
second point is that the Mower Morons (who aspire to the IQ of bush-fire
brigade members) had been around and skun the ground so that only Capeweed had
survived. No orchids here thank
you! That being said the cemetery has an
interesting collection of memorials. The
Chinese section, while small is interesting
and the ‘Old Catholic’ section had
some interesting memorials.
There was a small brass plate describing a lady as
the mother of person A , the housekeeper for Father Y (surely not an accidental
juxtaposition) and John O’Brien’s ‘Sweet Josephine’.
We headed off
towards Yanco with a quick foray in to part of the MIA State Forest. It was obvious, from the debris in the barbed
wire, that this area had also been under 1m+ of water. Again it seemed that the floods had
obliterated most of the understorey.
Frances commented that she hadn't seen a single flowering shrub.
We bailed
out and went to our place in Yanco
which seems excellent. The owners have had the place for less than a year (they a poster showing it as a ‘renovate or detonate’ proposition and have restored it to match modern needs with the history.
Possibly it was the first house in Yanco. The owner – Peter – showed us how things
worked and it really does seems to be a very satisfactory place to stay.
Answers
1) Putin would be speaking French!
