Onwards to Mullaway

On waking I went to take Tammy for a walk.  Drat: the sky doth micturate (isn’t it interesting that micturate is OK but a word meaning the same, but beginning with ‘p’is rude?).  What is it about short words?

Breakfast (definitely in the gourmet category) was enlivened by conversation with Laraine and Colin (our hosts) and another two guests.  Much amusement was generated by trying to sort out what would happen if Tammy and the other two guest-dogs (a Ridgeback and a Wiener-dog) got together.  The answer was going to be “apocalyptic devastation” so separation was enforced.  A great start to the day. 

The rain continued until we got almost to Kempsey where we refuelled: again over 33mpg!  Interestingly we were told where the discount petrol stations were by a cop who gave me an RBT (I passed, as I would hope to after only 1 glass of red last night – and none for breakfast today).  The other intriguing factor about the Kempsey area was the number of Cattle Egrets around the paddocks in the flood plain (a bit of foreshadowing there in the use of the word ‘flood’): possibly because this was the first area where we had been able to see paddocks rather than bush!

The driving was quite easy apart from the activities of a caravan-towing driver who drove at 10kph below the limit on 2 lane and 10kph over the limit on overtaking lanes.  Ban the van – or allow RPG launchers on other vehicles!  The only mentally ugly roadworks (physically/visually there is no other form of roadworks) were from Sapphire to Woolgoolga where we were limited to 80kph for (a) 10kms and (b) no apparent reason.  Obviously as it was a Saturday no-one was working.

As we drove along we heard a weather forecast.  It was talking about a flood warning for the North Coast.  Oops: we are not heading South!  The forecaster then said something along the lines of “This forecast is probably conservative” and mentioned 40 –70mm Sunday and 30-40mm each for Monday and Tuesday.  Oh poop.  (Watching TV in the evening the weatherperson singled out Coffs Harbour for mention of thunderstorms! But we are about 15km North of Coffs so perhaps it won’t affect us?)

We found the letting agent and the house and got into it.  The back yard is basically dog fenced but I suspect Tam could find her way out.  The place seems great and the surroundings just what I wanted with a nice dog-allowed beach and some nice heathland to check out.  Some of the Melaleucas are very photogenic as were the Pandanus tectorius (Screw pine) fruits

and the banksias.

We will now have a commercial break.  We were lent, by a naturalist friend, a copy of “Noosa’s Native Plants” by Stephanie Haslam.  Although we are a fair few km South of Noosa we were told this was going to be very helpful and such has proven to be the case.   We also have with us “Ocean Shores to Desert Dunes” by David Keith which covers the native vegetation formations of NSW and the ACT.  As well as describing the vegetation and the soils and situations in which they are found it also gives typical species.  So I am hopeful that by melding these two sources of information we’ll know a bit more about what we are looking at.  A future post on my main blog may cover more on this topic.

After traversing the beach – no signs about banning dogs (Great Lakes Shire please note) – the walk took us on a good bitumen path around a headland.  The only other folk we saw at this stage were three young blokes rock fishing below the cliff.  This may correlate with the memorial sign to “a great dad” at the top of the cliff.  As we came back (since rain seemed imminent) we met the three young persons, each carrying two or three fish, described as “only tailor”.  Since we had seen the remains of a tuna (ie a metre long fish, missing the fillets)

on the beach I could understand the inclusion of ‘only’.   Shortly thereafter we saw, and heard a member of the local intelligentsia doing burnouts with a ute.  The first mild negative for the area!

Getting back to the beach we saw a young woman with two big dogs there. Tammy was hot to go and discuss issues with them, but it didn’t happen: given the relative size of footprints that was probably a good thing!

Several birds were added to the trip list (now at 32) including Torresian Crows and Australian Gannet.  These and 9 other species also did some good for my year list.  A very pleasant evening ensued watching the huge plasma TV with Austar access.

A brief visit to Johville

The view this morning was enlivened by the steam (or smoke, I am not sure of the technology) from the Condong Sugar Mill hitting a temperature inversion about 100m up. 

Before getting to the topic of the title I’ll just record that at noon the external temperature recorded in the car at Tweed Heads was 19 degrees and there was not a cloud in the sky.  Then I heard the weather in Canberra: 6 degrees and the rain expected to stop by evening. Yes!!!!!

It was a brief visit to the next State to the North, Oh my goodness, yes, don’t you worry about that!  Just long enough to record 6 species of birds for my Queensland list for 2011.  The drive along Tomewin Rd towards Currumbin was quite interesting, and I could certainly see the attraction of the road for the weekend warriors on 2 wheels.  If I felt like working I think I’d open a stall selling new foot-pegs for motorbikes at one end of the road, and franchise someone to do the same at the other. 

Fortunately for the sake of the Subaru I had a passenger who doesn’t like being chucked around (I must get the full race seat belts fitted sometime and throw these pussy inertia-reel jobbies away).  There is also the potential for Chunderpooch to revisit us which is another reason to take it gently on steep and winding roads.  At one point we noted a sign to ‘Bains Rd: formerly Rainforest Glen’.  Obviously Mr Bain had fixed up that naughty rainforest!  Shortly after this we saw a cyclist getting in shape on a 10% grade.  Then we hit the 14% grade he’d already conquered !

So after getting to Currumbin we didn’t go and get Lorikeet guano all over us but hit the Pacific Highway and headed for Tweed Heads, back in NSW and the 21^st Century (CE - I’m not sure about other cultures’ timetables). 

We started with a couple of walks recommended in the Tweed birders pamphlet.  The first was along part of the estuary system covering a boardwalk and a dirt road.  The highlight of this was an Osprey – my first for some time.  We next went to an area off Vintage Drive.  As we went in the names of the streets – all types of wine – seemed familiar and then daylight dawned: we had been to this spot in 2008 on our way back from Brisbane.  Still good as we added a couple of simple birds (Black Swan and Coot) to the trip list.

We then decided to find our way to an Aldi store in South Tweed Heads.  The main problem was that one of our maps only showed about half the roads (and some of the names were out of date) while the other one only showed half the area.  This meant we took a fair tour of the area, but eventually got where we needed to go. However we got there.   Coming back a surprise right lane turn caught me out and we spent some time touring the largest and most confusing set of roadworks in creation.  I think this must be some sort of test to keep undesirables from migrating from Queensland: it was much better signed to get to Brisbane than anywhere else.

Eventually we made it to the road to Fingals Head where we took a signed track to the beach.  This was the perfect beach: wide, gently sloping clean sand, beautiful surf rolling in and about 6 other folk on the 5km of sand!  Dogs allowed!  Just before we got to the turn-round point (ie close to a couple of other folk and about 1.5km from where we hit the beach) we saw some dolphins surfing.  One of them did a complete aerial off the top of a wave!

Frances had noticed a lighthouse on top of a headland so we decided to visit it.  It was a great spot- dogs welcome on leads on a great walk though a bit of forest (picking up Bar-shouldered Dove en route). 

 Several folk were on the headland watching the Humpback Whales disporting themselves as they migrate to Hervey Bay.  We saw quite a few spouts, several tailfins and a reasonable collection of breaches.  As we headed back to the car we saw more dolphins. 

As well as this the area was signed to the Giants Causeway: not quite as spectacular as (I am led to believe) the place in Ireland (apparently the Scottish end of that formation is part of Fingal's Cave: thanks Rob for the correction) but the guy fishing off the top was going to have trouble getting off as his escape route had waves breaking over it. 

Other fishermen were not as daft.

On getting home I gathered some material to light my fire (in the slow combustion stove) when I spotted someone in the valley doing a better job.  To my surprise it had died down in about 15 minutes (and no one else lit up after dark, drat it).