One sleep to go!

The penultimate kip at Goondiwindi was pretty good, although hearing rain a couple of times in the night was ungood.  No biggie however.

We were on our way before 9 and bought breakfast in the town.  We didn't hang around much as it was raining again.  I didn't even see a statue of Gunsynd to photograph.  The Home Hardware store did provide some rat sized glue traps: here is hoping!

In passing I noticed a sign for the "Goondiwindi öff-road race" next weekend.  I'm glad we aren't in town for that revhead special.  On the road I saw several trucks laden with buggies and in Coonabarrabran a bunch of utes with many trail bikes. Good we're outtathere.

The weather was basically horrible as we crossed the State border - surprisingly only about 500m past the end of the town - and drove down towards Moree.  Lots of trucks coming towards us and quite a few caravans (all Vic registered) going, slowly, our way.  The Newell Highway is after all the direct route from Melbourne to Brisbane.  At one point we were held up for about 10 minutes by some unemployables talking about roadworks.

On the one time we had been to Moree in the past it seemed rather suave.  This route took us through the industrial outskirts, so not suave.  On on towards Narrabri.  The country to the West of the road was MBF: Mind Bogglingly Flat.

 Some lumps were visible to the East.

As we neared Narrabri they turned into Mount Kaputar.

 A bit further down the road I noticed a flagpole and a bunch of brass plates on rocks.  Surely a War Memorial.  Nope done on the 100th anniversary of founding the village and the rail service to the NW.  Interestingly they gave everyone's name and when they lived in the area.

I then found another plaque referring to Lone Pine.  I reckon this is a War Memorial even though the pines seem to have died.

 Between Moonie and Goondiwindi we saw a few signs to "rig ##" but no Lock the Gate material.  Once South of the border this was a common message as we went on to Narrabri.

 They had a War Memorial!

South of Narrabri the anti CSG message changed to protecting the Pilliga.  Still basically sticking it to Santos and their ilk.

We wondered if it was worth stopping for another night or just press on.  After an interesting drive from Coonabarrabran on the Google shortest route (with some rather wet and ordinary dirt roads) we got to Wellington at 3:15 and decided that (apart from the tiredness issue) getting home at 7:30 pm or later to a cold dark house was ungood.  So we are at the Riverview Caravan Park in that town.

• Bird of the day: Cockatiel gets the individual award, while a mob of about 80 Little Corellas get a flock guernsey.
• Vegetation of the day:    The epicormic growth in the Pilliga.
• Memorable moment:  Posting our Census form back at Boggabilla!
• Comment of the day: "Please pick up the mess." Apparently the owner of the van park at Wellington has a few 'pon my sole' issues.  I assured her we would collect.
• Pie of the day: A steak and kidney item from Narrabri.  Quite sound: the crust was a tad moist and the kidney taste was not strong, but a lot better than most offerings in QLD!  8/10
• Troppo moment of the day. Waiting for 10 minutes at road works, which mainly consisted of 5 fat bastards standing around talking.  (In contrast in a couple of cases guys were filling in potholes, ducking out in gaps in the 110kph traffic: go figure the OHAS mentality! )

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Turning back the clocks

I'll start by commenting on trucks on the Newell Highway.  Elsewhere that we have stayed on a major Highway (Hay, Dubbo, Bourke) the trucks have basically stopped from midnight to about 6am.  Not Gilgandra where they came along the Newell throughout the night.  We still got a fair nights sleep but it was curious.

Back to the post title.  Many years ago a flight from Sydney landed in Brisbane during the time NSW had daylight saving but QLD didn't.  Not realising that the then Premier of the Peanut State was sitting in business class the pilot said:

 "WE have landed in Brisbane.  Set your watches back an hour and your mind back 50 years. "

The pilot was sacked.  Today it was Winter so the situation didn't arise but I am typing this from St George Qld.

Before getting there we got up, With some trepidation as it was rather cool (1 degree at Dubbo)!  After breaking our fast we went for a walk along the Castlereagh, in the Callitris forest opposite the windmill walk.

Very pleasant with a few good birds including Black-faced Cuckooshrike and Fan-tailed Cuckoo, both of which have left Carwoola for warmer climes (such as Gilgandra).  Several Mallee Ringnecks were seen  as well as 2 Rainbow Lorikeets.

The first less pleasant sight was where some local 4x4 owners had ploughed up the riverbank.

A curious sight was the remains of a bucket hanging in a tree.  Why was it there?

The second less pleasant sight was a former pig dumped beside the track.  Tammy was most interested in getting some fresh meat.

 We then headed North and on approaching Gulargambone were impressed by sculptures of Galahs.  There were at least 30 of these in various numbers..

 Then Frances worked it out, pronouncing the town as Gullahgambone rather than Goola....  They had a Memorial Hall and the plaque was snappable from the street.

Coonamble had a much more impressive memorial, which from conversation with a local had been in many locations in the main street.  I was impressed to notice that the District had lost 84 men in WW1 but 'only' 25 ub WW2.

 There was quite a bit of muralisation around the town, possibly inspired by the spiffy, abstract Shire logo.

 As we pressed on towards Walgett we met a herd of Santa Getrudis on the Long Paddock.

 After Walgett - looked no better than on our last visit - we came across an oversize load.  That was certainly truth in advertising.

 Here is the emu sculpture on the highway just outside Lightning Ridge.

 This nice mural was on the wall of the 'Ridge Social Welfare Centre.

We didn't stay long in the Ridge but headed off back to the Highway.  There was  a brief interruption as Mr and Ms Plod were doing RBT - possibly mid afternoon on a Sunday was not a bad time.  I passed: Frances noticed Mr P, who 'did' me look in the back seat of the car.  I wonder why?

Once across the border - of which we have no image as it came and went a tad swiftly - birdlife picked up.  Highlights were:

• a huge all black wedgetail lifting off from some roadkill;
• several kms further up the road an Adult White-bellied Sea Eagle lifting off with some road kill; and
• several clans of Apostlebirds  in a 2km long stretch.  My estimate was at least 100 birds  in total.  Now that is a bunch of Apostles!

What was surprising was that all this birdlife was in the general vicinity of the very notorious Cubby Station: the cotton farm that makes the Darling run backwards.  I don't think they would have been pumping today, as we had driven for 500km with water lying beside the road.

We found the Caravan park at St George and checked in. Most of the clients seem to be jolly fisherpersons.  A bunch of them were gathered at the camp kitchen - near our site -  being jolly, as well as doing Benny Hill audience impressions.  

 This was a worry but they had their drinks and/or tea and calmed down again and by 8:30 all is good!

• Bird of the Day:  Mallee Ringneck   Eagles were contenders but both available down South . The flock of the day was the Apostlebirds,
• Vegetation of the day: Many hectares of dead stuff in a wet area.  I presume it was an indication of the drought that has probably broken..
• Memorable moment:  This category includes things that we can think about to work what story is being told.  The can hung on a tree wins out over the Coonamble War Memorial moving up and down the street,
• Comment of the day: As the party was breaking one one of the members said "Well we'll see you later somewhere.  I probably won't recognise you but I'll say g'day any way.

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Vada Heads of the Mid-North Coast

Bird of the day: Eastern Reef Egret.  

The big flock goes to an enormous collection (about 150 birds) of Hardhead in the Belmore River..
Flower of the day: An unknown aloe in a garden near Flynns Beach

Garden of the day: No award today..
Geological feature of the day: Two colours in adjacent  rocks at Nobbys Beach.

Other contenders will appear below, only slightly unhappy at missing out on the biggie!
Outstanding Weather feature of the day; Warm and sunny all day!  Not the forecast for this area tomorrow!
Council behaviour of the day: Bouquets for dog access at Lighthouse Beach (Port Macq) and Hat Head (where the Council appeared to have controlled NSW NPS).  A brickbat for the restruicted hours at Crescent Head.

As we set off for our dog walk a blimp was cruising over the town.  It continued to do this all dy, showing that the wind was very light.

This is a view of the headland at the South end of Nobby's Beach.  The purple arrow marks the obelisk on top of the rock.

In the evening - you should excuse the jump in time - I climbed up to it on a rather steep track which would be great fun if wet.  The obelisk commemorates two guys who died at the base of the headland in 1874 - one who got into trouble in the water and the other who jumped in to try to save him.

Getting back to the dog walk, this is the whole plant of 'flower of the day'.

Our main expedition on this day was focused pn Crescent Heads about 30km North.  To get there we took a ferry across the Hastings River.  I took a snap of some pelicans on a sandbar but decided that the roll cage on the ute next to me made a nicer image.

We took the Maria River Rd to Crescent Head expecting this to be good for birding.  In fact it was just about devoid of birds and there was no sign of the River.  Most vegetation was in a Nature Reserve which apart form being canophobic had no obvious means of public access.

As well as the reef Heron which was Bird of the day our first Darter of the trip was on the rocks at Crescent Head.

In the water were many surfers.  Apparently the town is famous for its break, and is also a convenient distance North of Sydney for those heading up the Coast to stop off.

The strata on the headland to the South of the town were a  contender for geological feature of the day.

There were two traditional signs on most beaches: one banning things (eg dogs) and the other setting out bag limits.  It would be interesting tosee if these vary by site or follow some standard.

The Crescent Head War Memorial.

Frances had a conversation with the lady in the bakery (who gave good pie, and excellent pumpkin bread) and she suggested going to Gladstone and some other small towns up there.  Gladstone had an interesting War Memorial is that it was a street (Memorial St) with 10 small posts topped with memorials to individuals who had died in conflicts from the Boer War to WW2.

The town also had this rather spiffy, and large Police Station.

Overall it seemed a rather pleasant and well-looked after town.  This became particularly interesting on the way home when we crossed the Macleay River to Smithtown, the site of a huge Nestlé factory.  The latter town was run down and daggy - obviously where the workers lived.  It didn't have a Memorial of any sort so isn't really a town!

In between visiting those two settlements we went to Hat Head.  This about three streets lined with holiday shacks, plus a canophobic caravan park,  To our astonishment the beach was an off leash area so on we went.  The beach was magnificent - and not crowded.

We headed back home through Kempsey finding a memorial to the dead of the Macleay District as we went.

By now we were getting a little low on fuel so swung into a service station which was charging 142c/l which was a fair bit better than the 145c/l being asked in Port Macquarie.  Then I found that they were adding 1.5% to the bill if you used a credit card so moved on.  In fact we moved about 400m down the road to a place which charged 134c/l! Go figure the economic rationale of that.  (The next day, as we left Port McQ a place on the highway - about 10km from the town centre- was asking 132c/l which is even more bizarre.)

We had some daylight left when we got back to Port Macquarie so I climbed up to the obelisk as reported above.  On descending a Brahminy Kite was perched on a rock.  I really like these birds, which seemed to be very common on this trip.

We then moved down to Lighthouse Beach, which Frances had visited the previous evening.  It took a bit of reading to work out where the dog area was but it started at these arher magnificent rocks.

Another magnificent beach - the specks in the distance are some of the many folk exercising their pooches.

The dog friendly area was quite well used which the canophobic area was unoccupied (apart from one person transiting it with their dog, and a surfer leaving the water).  That demonstrated the total daftness of year-round dog restrictions.

The cloudscapes were very attractive.

Back at the camper we reviewed the weather forecast for the next few days and decided Corindi, with 50kph wind, was not what we wanted so decided to head for Grafton instead.

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Bona tempus -finally

I can't find a Polari word for weather so have invented one, based on French.

Lets run through the awards for the day.
Bird of the day:  Pied Butcherbird.  Flock of the day was about 50 Straw-necked Ibis. 
Flower of the day:Very few contenders.  The winner was this yellow jobbie outside the door into St John's Church in Raymond Terrace.

Garden of the day: Well won by some trimmed privet and Camellia in a park in Taree.

Geological feature of the day: This was a view of the escarpment from 4 Mile Hill outside Taree.  Sorry, no snap.

Outstanding Weather feature of the day; Warmth and stillness at Port Macquarie.
Council behaviour of the day: Whoever the idiots were who closed off a lane on at least a kilometre of the Pacific Highway for weed mowing.  And were then sitting there having their lunch as we drove past at 40kph!

The weather at Fingal Bay was not good and we were concerned it had damaged the camper.  If this was the case we were going to abandon and return home.  However we persevered and by the time we got to about Taree things were pretty good.  As we sat outside tonight to eat tea they are also good at Port Macquarie.

Finally we can answer "Yes"to "Are we having fun yet?"

After a very ordinary half nights sleep- the wind had dropped but the camper seemed to be groaning more we decided to head to Port Maquarie and see what happened.  (The alternative was to throw in the towel and go home.)  Our first stop was Raymond Terrace where the Town Clock deluded us into thinking we had a Memorial.

This was the Memorial, a block off the main drag

In writing about Soldier's Point I commented on the roof over the bowling green.  A similar structure was at Raymond Terrace and on enquiring I was told it was to keep both rain and sun off the bowlers

Another Memorial built into a wall at St Johns Church.

On to Buladelah for another Memorial and lunch.

Quite a few kms further up the highway was Taree.  They had an excellent Park around the Memorial with a clock-obelisk for WW1 and polished marble for WW2.

A bit further into the park were some interesting sculptures.  I particularly liked the top portrait on the LH pole!

This overall work was pretty good ...

....  but where the rainbow serpent meets M S Escherwas particularly clever

They had even printed nice images on their litter bins!  The small child is asking if she can pat Tammy (who was exploring the back of the bins - perhaps something had been spilled)!

Two more sculptures in the main street (note the goanna on the ground).

Cundletown is on the edge of Taree.  Despite being on the main drag - inspirationally named "Main St" - this Hall was not in the Register of NSW Memorials: it is now!

After some limited help at the Port Macquarie VIC we found our way to the Flynns Beach caravan park and checked in.  It was warm enough to sit outside untill after dark!   The lady manager said they had koalas but all we found today was this Brush-tailed Possum in the tree above our site.

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