I wonder where the birdies iz?

Bird of the Day:  Buff-banded Rail was nominated as rare in Canberra but excellent views today.  (We  forgot the Osprey seen in the Clarence River which has emulated Robbie McEwen in bolting from the peleton at the last moment abut unfortunately was ruled to have used the elbows and thus didn't get the goodies.) Another contender was Plumed Whistling Duck but they have become regular in Bungendore.  The size of PWD  flock (82) was also good.  However big flock went to Common Starling as they have been scarce on the trip (hooray!) since Dubbo.

Plant of the Day:   Scaevola calndulacea – attractive and we could ID it!  A Gahnia gets mentioned as the seeds were pretty.

Scene of the Day;  The expanse of the Clarence River just upstream from Maclean.  (This may reflect our River-deprived SA backgound.)The beach at Wooli pressed forward, but was really just another pristine 20km of wave-kissed sand!

Art of the day;  Dunny and surrounds at Maclean.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  Rural Fire Service sheds in every town and locality!

Maximum Temperature 22 Minimum temperature  10

Distance traveled  with camper 0 without camper 250

We began the day with another walk around the Lake area.  The seeds on this Gahnia were, as always with this genus, attractive.

This we believe to be a Pimelea sp.

And here we have Scaveola sp

So today we decided to go back to the area North of Grafton to find a few memorials and do some of the bird routes listed on a leaflet we picked up at the Grafton Visitors Centre.

The route basically followed the Clarence River North of Grafton.  The first town was Ulmarra, where we found a War Memorial on the banks of the River.

In the River was this rather good looking yacht.  Note the width of the River: we are not talking Whiskers Creek, nor even the Molonglo, here but a serious amount of the wet stuff.

I tried to get a photo of the dog walking around on the roof of the yacht but Ms Yacht-Person got in with a squirrel tackle first.

Our next stop was a small village across a much narrower body of water (call it Molonglo sized) by the name of Brushgrove.  They had a fairly basic Memorial in a rather pleasant park

The next big town North was Maclean.  They had a rather good Visitors Centre and were able to tell me exactly where the Memorial was, on the way into the centre.

Maclean was not exactly a Welsh Settlement.

Indeed I suspect the adornment of the power poles with clan tartans went far beyond what would be considered tasteful by the most rabid Scottish Independence advocates!

I am talking every power pole on the main drag through the town, not just one or two.  Then we find the flower shop using puir wee scottie dawgs as an advertisin' gimmick.  Och aye the noo!

Even the indigenous art on the dunny is interrupted by a tartan sign for "Lassies".

I suppose that is fair enough as  Lassie was a Scots breed of mutt.

I thought this work on an adjoining wall was better however.

Here is an old bridge across the South Arm of the Clarence.  (We are back into big river stuff here.)

We found the Osprey nest shortly after this and saw the occupant do an swift exit as we pulled up.  From that point on the birding got a tad sparse as it seems that everywhere was short of water and heat to get flowers/fruit/bugs happening to attract birds.

Road signs were also a tad sparse and caused some difficulties finding one area.  It was however the highlight of the day with a flock of 82 Plumed Whistling Duck.

We dipped thoroughly on Brolga and Jabiru, but on arriving at an area were cane harvesting was about to kick off found a sufficiency of Cattle Egrets.

After going back through Brushgrove to its companion village of Cowper we found the memorial to the Cowper bus crash.  Not a war memorial but one to a site of some importance to those of us driving around Australia.  It doesn't stir any memories for us: this is probably because we were in New York on holiday at the time: Or possibly flying home and worried about the imapct of an airline pilots strike on our travel plans.

This is a strange epiphytic cactus we encountered somewhere along the way.

Due to the shortage of birds to be examined we again found time to add in a side trip.  In this case it was to Wooli, 35km of the Highway on the Coast.  It was a very strange town seeming to consist entirely of fibro holiday homes.  However it did have a Bowling club (with Chinese restaurant if you were really hungry) and a war memorial.

Obviously a flagpole fits in the top for events like ANZAC day (presumably if left in situ someone would nick it for an auxillary mast) and there were a row of seats behind.

The big deal at Wooli however is the Goanna Pulling Championships.

I'll leave it to you to follow the link cited on the sign.

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