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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Eat lerp – twenty million Silvereyes can’t be wrong

Waking up to a view of Mt Warning is a very good way to start the day.  Frances commented that it could be the most photographed mountain ever.  I’m not sure about that, unless she was forecasting the number of images taken over the next week, but it is certainly one of the most spectacular views in Australia.

 I referred above, with a small amount of contempt, to us being close to Queensland.  I think that, rather than anything to do with electronics, is to blame for us getting ABC Kids programming rather than ABC News Breakfast from 6am to 9am.  Looking – very briefly - at the program on offer I could see that it had been designed to be very politically correct: about 6 kids of all sorts of races (possibly even one gringo).   A more hopeful note is that the CGI characters all floated off with big eyes and silly grins, although neither Timothy Leary nor Ken Keasey were given credit for the script!  Bleccch!

I spent some time on the deck watching Mt Warning change colour as the sun came up and noting down the few birds who either came into view or whose calls I could recognise.  There are a lot of Whipbirds in this area.

Our main aim of the day was to visit a Market or two.  The first of these was intended to be Nimbin, not because I particularly wished to go to those markets but I did feel the village had an important role in Australia society (from the Aquarius Festival) and I wanted to see what it was like now. 

As we headed off towards Murwillumbah a strange looking bird flew into a tree.  It was sufficiently odd looking for me to back up for a good look.  What an excellent  idea: this was only the second Pacific Baza I had ever seen!

Once we turned off the Kyogle road towards Nimbin the quality of road declined dramatically.  (Taking another trip down memory lane, on our previous visit to the area I attributed the state of the Kyogle road to the Shire being unwilling to put money into a road serving a bunch of goddam hippies.)  I suspect the same still applies to Blue Knob Rd, plus the boundary between Tweed and Lismore Shires is about halfway along the road so there would also be a reluctance for one Shire to do up a road to somewhere else.

We found the market which was not exactly a hive of activity. 

Frances wandered in and acquired some bromeliads while I stayed out with Tammy and acted as referee in her discussions with a large Border Collie type beast.  The funniest bit was the BC keeping trying to pat her on the head.  It didn’t know that it was likely to lose a foot if it persevered in that approach.

The village was very interesting in a strange way.  The whole place seemed to be set up as a tourist trap but there did seem to be an underlying philosophy being marketed.

 I referred above to a couple of writers who would certainly approve of the emphasis given to certain hemp products around the town.  

This topic rears its head again in about 5 days time: it may also explain why there was a 4x4 full of NSW finest wandering around the town (it is unclear whether they had come to hassle the local entrepreneurs or to get a sack of goodies for inhalatory purposes).

The message on a door about stopping coal seam gas

 was reflected in signs in a number of spots around the area opposing fracking.  (Apart from the many problems with this nasty technology which can be supported by logical facts, the observation that it was invented by Halliburton should be enough to condemn it on emotional grounds!)  Later in the week I read that 3,000 people had attended a recent Lock The Gate rally in Murrwillumbah: well done Tweed folk!

I have since come a cross a copy of the Nimbin Good Times (describing itself as the Alternative Journal of the Rainbow Region) which has a front page story about a proposed development of a Zorbing site in the village.  The proponent thereof seems to be associated with the YHA and has all sorts of “good ideas” about making the YHA independent (from what, is not specified) plus planting 500,000 trees over 150 acres (what metric system?).  It will get tourists to spend more time in the village (current visitor stay is 4 hours).  The opponent as quoted lives next door and talks about the dam into which the Zorbas get deposited having some rushes that ducks breed in and having filmed swans there.  He also mentions “commercial venture” as though it is an obscenity (probably a fair call) and talks a lot about destroying the peace and quiet.  He is probably getting into NIMBinYism – and in his circumstances so would I: ban the Zorb!

As well as all the hippie stuff Nimbin had the usual facilities of a small country town.  The work on the outside of the bowling club was rather innovative

as was the attire of the bowlers (and the rock music being played to accompany the game.

Of course with all the tokes being took around the town there was the possibility of a roach ending up in somewhere combustible so they had a Bushfire Brigade.  The signage on the outside of the shed is again innovative.

We have got a guide to birding spots in the Tweed Valley which included the Clarrie Hall Dam.  As we were passing I thought we’d drop in for a look.  The biographical material about Clarrie started off with several words about him being hard working lad on his Dad’s selection: this had me wondering why a cow cockie got a Dam named after him.  Then it emerged that he had been Shire President for some 17 years which explained everything!  There were not a great number of birds around, but we had a great walk through the forest beside the dam and spotted a Jacana trotting across the lilies on the far side of the dam.

As we headed back we found that the Uki market was still in operation.  They had a very good musical duo doing their work, which I listened to while overseeing Tammie’s interaction with a Pomeranian.  Astonishingly the Pom seemed to be faster than she was!  Frances acquired some olive products from one of the stalls.

After getting home I spent more time on the deck looking at the hordes of Silvereyes flitting through the treetops.  I have no idea how many there were but an awful lot.  I’m not even sure they were eating lerps (ie scale insects) but I did like the reference back to a famous Australian saying about blowflies.   On continuing to watch them they seemed to be eating berries (or possibly bugs that were eating the berries).

The other notable thing about the Sunday afternoon was the number of motorbikes thundering up or down Tomewin Rd.  Obviously it is seen as a challenging road to ride hard so the lads were out and getting into it on all sorts of bikes: from the exhaust notes both Harleys and Ducatis were popular.  Presumably the cops don’t fuss about this unless the death toll gets out of order.  (Another interesting memory is that this time last year we saw the same sort of behaviour on a road across the North York Moors.)