Heads of the North Coast (Inland version)

Bird of the Day:  Logrunner: only second sighting and very good long views.  This narrowly pipped Scarlet Honeyeater, seen by me at Vintage Lakes and Frances at Hosanna.  Other contenders were Striped Honeyeater and Brahminy Kite at the Lakes. 

Plant of the Day:  Grevillea at Hosanna providing much attraction for honeyeaters.

Scene of the Day;  Mount Warning.

Art of the day;  Side of the shop in Uki.  A number of hoardings and other works in Nimbin got a stroll up the aisle but not a nod at the end.

Typically Australian thing of the day: Conversations between dog owners. 

Maximum Temperature 21 Minimum temperature 3

Distance traveled  with camper  0 without camper 160

My morning began early with a trip to Vintage Lakes to meet with my mate Garry  (over-Wintering on the Gold Coast) and the Tweed Valley Birders.  Here is Mt Warning at sunrise.

 I had consulted Google maps and found that the route through the cane fields was quite simple (basically what we done coming home in reverse) and much quicker than the highway.  The only difficulty was that it was smack into the rising sun and thus I missed a crucial turn and overshot a bit.  The folk were excellent, and the birds quite good (over 60 species for a 3 hour walk, and much grizzling that it used to be a lot better).

The only worthwhile snapI took was these two Corellas checking out a nest hollow.

On the way back I took a picture of the Condong Sugar Mill: the only one in the area currently crushing.  When we were last in the area - about 4 years ago - a good proportion of the cane had already been harvested.  I presume the difference was due to seasonal matters such as no rain!

This Grevillea was very popular with birds.  While I was out Frances had seen a Scarlet Honeyeater in the vicinity: they are always a beautiful bird.

Here is our site, looking towards th rainforest over the creek.

Our aim in the afternoon was to revisit Nimbin, to see how the ambience was mid-week.  We found a short cut from Stokers Siding to Uki (pronounced Yook -eye rather than Ookie).  We found a Memorial there - which apparently no other reporter to the Register had done (later update: they had reported it but under the name of Tweeds Heads South, which seems to be the sponsoring RSL sub-Branch).

The town has a fair bit of counter-culture feel to it and I really liked this mural on the wall of a store/

Like I said, wow, heavy Steam Punk and Herb: the folk in the shop didn't look particularly Rastafarian!

We swung into the Clarrie Hall Dam and walked along the track beside the dam for a bit.  The walk along the dam wall had suffered by a 2m high barrier being installed, probably to prevent flooding.  It did mean one couldn't see up the dam until up the track a tad.

Nice forest beside the track.

On arriving at Nimbin we found the (unregistered) War memorial.

We also found some other folk walking a dog much like Tammy.  It seemed rather frail howver, and not interested in the usual sniff-fest.  Turned out it was 16 years old and its pancreas has given up.  Thus to digest its food they had give it tablets before every meal and restrict its diet to those times.  They obviously loved the dog, but we did wonder about its quality of life.

Here is the architecture of Main Street Nimbin.  Somewhat quieter than on the Market Day when we last visited but the overall feel was similar.

Some big Heads!

More murals.

I really liked the look of these shops, but didn't need/want what they were selling.

The main appeal of the emprium in the next image was the figure seated on the roof.  A bit of class to the design.

Back to the campground before dark.  This did convince us that the advice a couple of days earlier to get from Lismore to Stokers Siding via Bangalow was spot on.  Trying to finish off a stressful day dragging a camper via Nimbin, with storm clouds brewing, would not have been a happy event.

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