Definitely Slim and Dusty

Bird of the Day:  Straw-necked Ibis, in terms of rarity in Canberra.  Eastern Rosella has been unusual on this trip but they are bog common at home.   For big flock, welcome back Sulphur-crested Cockatoo.

Plant of the Day:  Magnolia in Tamworth, largely free-riding on a magnificent set in Armidale the previous day.

Art of the day;  The Vietnam War Memorial in Muswelbrook as a public sculpture: they even said what their objectives were and explained how it fitted them.  Other contenders were  the Slim Dusty tribute  in Tamworth and the town sign for Murrurundi.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  Largely under-utilised highways, interrupted by very congested high streets in towns.

Maximum Temperature  20 Minimum temperature  0

Distance travelled  with camper  250  without camper 0

After a good nights sleep we found it, as expected, rather chilly when we woke.  No matter: coffee and showers and off to check out Tamworth before hitting the Highway.  Our first stop was a park with War Memorials  This one is taken as the blogged sample as it includes a model of the route of the Sandakan Death Marches, which it is commemorating.

There are a lot of well preserved buildings around Tamworth.  This is the newspaper office.

This one is now the Conservatorium of Music but, from both the Madonnas on the RHS of the building and its closeness to  Catholic Church, was once a convent.  Convents are another type of building that is often outstanding in town architecture and well preserved.

As I have commented elsewhere the most ornate large building in a town is often the Post Office.

The pavement along Peel Street - the main drag - has stars inset, listing the winners of the Country Music Awards given out each year.  Where we joined Peel St the awards were for some time in the late 1990s and as a result I couldn't find a 'star' in which I recognised - let alone liked the work of - all the winners.  So I didn't photograph an example.  I did however recognise Slim Dusty and Joy McKean (and quite like much of their work).. I am not sure how Tammy's assessment of their statues concluded, but the usual decoration of a vertical surface didn't happen.

So it was back to the car and off towards the Hunter Valley.  On the way out of town we encountered the Golden Guitar.  This was adjacent to the facility at which the Awards are given each year, and fronts, I think, the Visitors Centre.  The main thing - other than utter tackiness - I remember is the difficulty in getting out of the place with a camper.  The lot was a bit crowded so I went through the take-out section of a KFC (and nearly took out the service hatch).  Sorry about that Colonel!

As we only had about 250km to travel today we were able to stop off a few times at interesting sites.  The setting of the road was excellent with continual great views of the ranges and plains we traversed.  unfortunately there was never a turn-out where we needed one to get a good photo of the scenery.

Presumably the Country Music business is important to the town economy but it generally seems very prosperous.  As we drove out all the properties along the track seemed to be studs of one breed or another, with Santa Gertrudis getting a few mentions.  (I always think of them as dry country cattle and how the cattle enjoy getting shipped from Tamworth to the Territory is an interesting question.)

Our first stop was on sighting the First and Second Fleet Memorial Gardens at Wallabadah.  There is a good level of skill in presentation of the stories of the Fleets and the subsequent history of the colony, as well as the listing of the names of all the people on the boats.  (The latter makes the site rather like the Holy Grail of Australian genealogy!

The next stop was Murrurundi  where the bowling club was entered via memorial gates.  Another, more recent, shiny polished granite, Memorial was on the opposite side of the road outside the Memorial Hall.  I can see no reason why they built the second one!

This is the town well (from 1884) together with horse and dog troughs added in the 1920s following a bequest from George and Anna Bills from Sydney (George being described as a driving force in the SPCA).

I really liked the signs for the town: as a small place of which I had never heard it was very interesting,  The local Historical Society appears to be very active.

Our next big town was Scone, where the memorial was erected outside the memorial swimming baths.

The area around Scone was replete with horse studs and I recall listening tot a recent Bush Telegraph in which a horse breeder was saying how the evil activities of the gas and coal exploiters was threatening the water used by the studs and opining that if the area gained gas but lost the studs the local economy was going to be in deep poop.  Well said that horse-person.

Moving on down the highway we came to Aberdeen where a smallish cenotaph was outside the RSL, which featured Rolls of Honour on the wall.

Getting to Muswellbrook we came across a Vietnam War Memorial.which was very well designed and laid out.  I will confess that it was all I can really remember about the town!

The countryside around here was very much coal country with the highway weaving between large open cuts and the wheelheads of underground mines.  However as with the ranges earlier, it wasn't possible to pull off to take pictures.  This is possibly not an accident as I can see the mines not wanting their activities publicised.

As we got into Singleton I noticed some rather fine buildings so pulled off the highway and into the town.  As we started to walk down the main street I was taken with these two signs suggesting a little suspected form of Masonic activity.  (The image has been received with amusement by a friend who is the Grand Wizzid of a lodge far from the Hunter Valley.)

The next emporium was an op shop for "Kids off the Streets" which had inter alia a set of coffee mugs and sugar bowls at $5 for the lot.  As we had been using plastic cups, acquiring these would add considerably to the couthness of our early mornings.  (As an aside, the number of slumped-over youth in Singleton suggested a good reason this NGO was active in the area,)

A nice old pub.

Magnolia time!  As noted in the highlights this tree gets an award through glory reflected from the specimens lining the road into Armidale the previous day.

The folk at the RSL in Singleton were well aware of the location of the Memorial in that town!

The park in which the Memorial was located was also seen as a des-res by the local chapter of Fruit Bats.

The final building we checked out was a large religious institution which turned out to be a Catholic Church with associated Convent.  It was very unusual to find a War Memorial tablet (commemorating "the Catholic men of this Parish who fell in the Great War 1914 -18.").  

On a previous expedition I had enquired of a priest why there were so few memorials in Catholic Churches and he had suggested that the war was possibly seen as 'Protestant business' and also that the anti-war views of Daniel Mannix may have been seen as a hint not to make a fuss.

So we found our way out of Singleton and down the road towards Cessnock (or at least Nulkaba where the caravan park we were aiming for was located).  The welcome here was very good as they explained that one of the residents worked at a winery and was given the bottles opened for tasting but not consumed.  They share this with their guests and we scored a 90% full bottle of Merlot.    There will be more on this tomorrow.

A nice sunset to finish the day.  Although we didn't drive that far it seemed like a pretty strenuous day so we were keen to hit the pit!

After dark the fairy lights decorating some of the long term vans were very pleasant.

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The weather yesterday was OK

Perhaps that should be ‘relatively OK’?  Overnight the sound of a howling wind made for a restless night for both of us: the small dog simply coiled a little tighter.  At 7am it is still howling and the rain is bucketing down as hard as I have ever seen it.  The weather forecast has just announced a flood warning for a couple of rivers in this area (including the Nambucca, which is not very far South of Coffs Harbour).  The small dog was happy to head for the back door for a toilet break, stuck her nose on the flyscreen and headed back to her blanket.

The drain at the back of the house has given up completely while there is a 2m wide torrent running down the road (in addition to what is going down the 25cm deep drain beside the road).  The block opposite (part of the Regional Park) is completely underwater.  Unfortunately as a result of the Unpleasantness At London Bridge I am not keen on taking my new (yes, it was an expensive UALB) camera out in the rain so the pix are not great.

An addition to the joys of the day is thunder.  Not continual, but occasional celestial rumbles.  Perchance this is why the lights flicker occasionally?  I am assuming it also explains why Austar put up a message about service being resumed when the bad weather goes away.

As there was a small break in the weather I took Tammie for a walk: primarily to get her bowels going since we might be leaving her home for a while today.  Everywhere is flooded and a few trees (or parts thereof) have assumed a prostrate growth form (although they aren’t going to be doing a lot growing from here on).  These two issues came together with the position of our neighbour’s garbage bins. 

It was a nice touch that the guy who mows the lawns etc swung by to check that there was no wind damage around our place.

The surf was definitely up,

but while there were black clouds and thunder rumbles to the South there was blue sky to the North.  Unfortunately our weather is currently coming from the South!

We were starting to get a tad low on a few things so went to the IGA in Woolgoolga- a small town we have stayed at in the past, just South of Mullaway.  The creek there was definitely in flood. 

After the shopping we swung out to the headland to see if there were any whales visible.  The only ones seen were those on the town water supply!

 I am intrigued about the Sikh influence in Woolgoolga.  There is a great new (opened in 1970) temple on the South end of the town 

and what looks like a decrepit old one by the main roundabout going into the CBD.  

In fact the rather decrepid one was a commercial enterprise, and not a Temple at all.From a guide to the town (by that famous author A N Other) it appears that the Sikhs came here for the banana industry.  More detail is given in the excellent book “Woolgoolga Past and Present” by Neil Yeates.  The story appears to be of Indians coming to the area for work on the banana farms (as employees not indentured folk – the first arrival was in ‘about 1939’) and then buying their own farms.  As is often the case with migrant groups, as they became successful other members of the community came to the area, both from India and elsewhere in Australia.  Woolgoolga seems to have been the last area where suitable land could be acquired.  From other comments in this book it appears that the banana industry was a classic ‘boom and bust’ scenario with the bust largely caused by monocultural over-exploitation (how unusual!).  Yeates comments that at the time of writing there were 172 banana farms in the area, of which 93 were operated by Indian families.

I have googled this book and there doesn't seem to be a secondhand copy of it on the market anywhere.  It is well out of print and as Mr Yeates is deceased no-one seems keen on reprinting it.

Shortly after getting home the sun came out so we went for a bit of a rock-comb.  This resulted in us finding several cowrie shells.   There were many other shells

and the pebbles were very shiny.  Although the odd big wave was still coming in the main trace of the awesome storm of this morning was big piles of foam.   

(After about 90 minutes the rain started again, just to keep us on our toes!  But it didn’t last long.)  During this expedition I added four species to the trip list (now 56) including Scaly-breasted Lorikeet.

For contrast here is a Rainbow Lorikeet.

I think I commented about it raining a bit today.  The total was 250.6mm: this is so far more than I have ever seen in a day it is not funny.  In old money it is close to 10 inches and round about 1/3^rd of Canberra’s annual average.

A Dog’s breakfast

Given the pleasant weather yesterday evening I suggested to Frances that we might drive to Woolgoolga lookout (a fantastic view) and stroll along the beach there.  So that is what we did. 

I knew from a run on our previous stay in this metropolis that there was a path and several steps down to the South beach and was pretty certain it was dog –OK.   The only problem with the proposal was that I got to the bottom of the steps etc and became unsure if I had looked the car.

So, despite the comments from another dog walker that it wouldn’t matter, it was back up to the car for a click.

As we walked along the beach I commented to Frances that it was a bit surprising there were no sea or shore birds around.  That all changed when we got to the estuary (? Mouth) of a small creek with a rocky islet off shore.  Four species of wader, two terns and the ubiquitous Silver Gull.  We didn’t feel like wading so imitated Mayor Whittington. 

As we walked back we spotted a fisher person with a very large dog about ¾ of the way back.  When we were about 200m away the large dog – by this time identifiable as a long haired German Shepherd – spotted Tammie and charged to investigate.  It seemed totally inoffensive, but I am always unsure how Tammie will react so scooped her up while about 40kgs of Shepherd danced around me.  The big boy headed off back to his owner who by this time had parked his rod and was dragging a large fish around.  On getting closer he apologised profusely for the behaviour of his dog and got it back interested in the large fish: the dog’s breakfast!

We trawled around Woolgoolga a bit and eventually found the library with 30 minutes free internet access for visitors.  Another excellent service from this very good Shire.  There was an interesting ‘alternative script’ in the library – and various other places around the village.  Daylight dawned: it was the script used by the Sikhs!

After returning home for lunch I went to investigate a house with a sign saying “Ding repairs” thinking this might be a good way of getting the dent in our car (from a roo incident about 14 months ago) fixed.  Unfortunately, as the young, tanned and tattooed resident politely explained, the dings he fixed were in surfboards rather than Subarus.  Bugger.   We went for a wander around the heath and along the beach.  The latter was very interesting for the things making tracks in the sand. 

As the surf was a lot tamer today there were a few folk out taking waves (and not, apparently, requiring ding repairs). 

An interesting sidelight was that all the surfers were initially male.  A young woman paddled her (new style) board out but stayed about 50m right of the mob.  To my mind this meant she was getting some fair breaks but was also very close to the rocks.  Was she just being polite or were the blokes a bunch of sexist sphincters (that is a 10 letter polite word: a 9 letter one beginning with ‘a’ would be less polite – but possibly more appropriate)?

I then went for my second run of the trip.  This was around the Headland walk which we have done several times.  The elapsed time suggested my guess of 6km was pretty reasonable.

We have just had a knock on the door.  It was a bloke whose wife had just seen “a small white dog running down the road” and didn’t know of other small dogs in the area.  We thanked him profusely, but it wasn’t Tammie.  This is the second time folk have dropped in to check we (or in this case Tammie) are OK.  What a nice bunch of folk round here.

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.)