Hopefully leaving the naff weather behind

Having borrowed a Polari term from The Princess Royal here are some words from the BoM:

Wet weather isn't expected to let up this weekend and Canberra meteorologist Sean Carson said what he consider to be "rubbish" weather on Friday would turn "feral" on Sunday. 

Friday was certainly rubbish, and Saturday wasn't much better.  In fact, Saturday achieved a status of at least rotten, with 15mm of rain in the evening.  At least there wasn't any snow.

Indeed Sunday turned feral, with snow starting about 7:30.  Here is the veg garden.

 As we drove out, Widgiewa Rd was appalling with about 5cm of snow settled.  I was not looking forward to the next 200km.  However when we got to the Plain there was no snow.  Getting in to Bungendore the hills of Kowen were well white.

 Right.  Having got that out of the way let us get back to the usual extrema of "XXX of the day".

Bird of the day:  Blue faced honeyeater, scavenging in a litter bin.  The big flock goes to Australian White Ibis.
Flower of the day: Acacia dealbata along the Hume Highway
Garden of the day: One at Fingal Bay with layers of Pandanus, cordyline etc.
Geological feature of the day: Cuttings in the sandstone going down to the Hawkesbury.
Outstanding Weather feature of the day; Snow!
Council behaviour of the day: This is a new category and could be a bouquet or a brickbat.  As I have said "Council", the latter is more likely.  Today the award goes to Port Stephens Council for banning dogs from most everywhere but not emptying litter bins so that rubbish is all over the place.

The drive to Sydney was fine.  There were few trucks but more cars than usual.  An annoyance in Sydney was the servo we heading for being shut, leading us to go to another which didn't offer a discount.  Then we found others which did, but didn't seem to be listed on the 'net.  Also the place we chose had a pump that cut out too soon, so we left about 10 litres early.

Whatever: we got outtathere and across the Hawkesbury.

After some farnarkling through Newcastle we got to the Port Stephens area.  The first thing seen here was a sign at Williamtown saying there was an "incident"and we should divert back to the Pacific Highway.  As this diversion was about 50km I decided to ignore the sign and see what the incident was.  I suspect it was a sign getting caught by a gust of wind as nothing else was evident.

On on towards Nelson Bay.  At Bobs Farm we spotted Murrays Brewery which had go some big wraps in a book on Australian beers.  One of their brews is called Moon Boy - I don't think Fred is a brew!

 It seemed very popular - including with Oriental tourists.  They were doing a US beer-style promo which explains the design on the pallet.

I ended getting 4 Dark Knight Porter (a good example of the style - lighter than a stout but tastier than a lager) and 4 Whale Ales (a very pleasant US style Pale Ale).

The camp seems good - the operators are very efficient and helpful and the scenery is great (seawards).

It is less great landwards, looking more like Gungahlin than anywhere nice.

As noted in the awards section above the Council seem good at banning things such as dogs,all spelt out on a sign, but less good at environmental stewardship, such as emptying bins.

The wind is very strong and it isn't hot: but at least it isn't snowing.

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