Swimwear in various applications!

Initially, I couldn't come up with an obscure title!  but as I went through the images a theme sort of emerged.

We began the day with a walk along Peterson's Creek.  At Frawley's Pool we stopped to look across the Creek for tree-kangaroos.  This led us to discover a low level bridge to the far side.  Thus we could get in to the Mobi forest where the marsupials lurk.  They were not lurking where we could spot them today.

However this basalt boulder field was lurking.  Clear evidence of the volcanic nature of the area.

We found that Nature had blocked the path with this rather magnificent spider.

 There is an outbreak of red Grevilleas towards the Northern end of the Creek Track,  I suspect they are planted, but could still be natives, which are rather more spectacular up here.

 Getting back to Yungaburra I decided it was time to photograph a few things around the village.  A sign at an arty centre.

 We have noticed a couple of instances of X^N swimwear strapped to various things.  In this case the curves of the tree form a very good backdrop!

After a pause at home we left the small dog and headed off to Mount Hypipamee NP to try to track down a Golden Bowerbird.  I tried taking a shortcut to avoid the main street of Atherton which didn't really work as not all roads are on the map.  We ended up being held for 10+ minutes by these road works.  After about 5 minutes the lollypop man came for a chat.  He was quite reasonable, but it was still a pain.

At one point we dived into the forest to look for the bower and found these fungi instead: note the second, darker, equally unidentified, species in the background.

Another cauliferous tree, Yellow Mahogany (Dysoxylum parasiticum), was flowering beside the track to the Crater itself.  The specific name reflects an incorrect belief that the tree was a parasite.

We took a diversion to Dinner Falls, where backpackers were disporting themselves, in a more or less (mainly less) clothed fashion.

The guy in this image had a camera with him.  I hope it wasn't recording the squeals emitted by the females!

Epiphytes were also available.

This is the Crater itself.  It's 58m down to the water which is in turn 73m deep.

As we went back, Frances got a nice snap of the Barron River above the Falls.

During our walk I spotted a Mountain Thornbill.  Surely as close as it gets to a small brown bird.  However it was a lifer and thus Bird of the Day.

We went back more or less on the main road, including a stop at the Gallo Dairy Centre.  A very pleasnt counter person served us with tasters of cheese of which several varieties were acquired along with a very good ice-cream and 4 chocolates (at $2 a go).

Once home, while sitting on the patio we were visited by a small colourful fly.  It turns out to be part of the mosquito grouping within Diptera (ie flies) and probably Plecia sp.

I include this shot as it shows the halteres rather well.  (The lollypop shape above the leg.)

Some noise then erupted which appeared to be a pair of Bar-shouldered Doves having a battle.  Then matters advanced and it was apparent they were continuing the species!

• Bird of the day: Mountain Thornbill.  No flocks of particular interest.
• Vegetation of the day:  Yellow Mahogany
• Memorable moment:  Pool full of nubiles at Dinner Falls.
• Comment of the day: "I have to take cash before handing over."  A very apologetic lady at the Yungaburra Visitors Centre when I wanted to buy a shirt and found I had left my wallet at home.
• Pie of the day:  Second half of the large market item.  Still good.
• Troppo moment of the day. Being held up for 10 minutes while the CFMEU manouevered a pipe 

Back to Index page

Best question and worst road!

Bird of the Day:  Brush Turkey at Corindi is the only contender.

Plant of the Day:  Mangroves along board walk at Corindi.  Tree ferns at the top of the escarpment after Dorrigo were contenders

Art of the day;  Helfgott memorial in Bellingen.

Typically Australian thing of the day:  churches locked up other than at service times.  Anglicans particularly bad at this!

Maximum Temperature  20 on coast – in ranges down to 13  Minimum temperature 10

Distance travelled  with camper  300  without camper 0

Pole carrier episode Winding roads.  No water in wetlands.  Zombies in N Bellingen

So the final dawn at Corindi image was taken ....

... and the final walk through the Swamp was taken.  The camper was taken down and packed.  Frances seemed to experience a few issues getting the cover back on the pole carrier.

As we got about 1km down the road I asked "Did you get that cover back on?".  Unfortunately the answer was "No."   Even more unfortunately it was followed by "And its fallen off."  So I walked back to the camp, failing to find it.  After going to our site with no luck I was checking for places it may have rolled to and as I got back to the entrance to the park spotted it on a Koppers Log where soeone had placed it.

Frances rated my question as best of the trip since the poles were just starting to move out and we may not have noticed them dropping!  Whatever, a disaster was dodged.

On down the road through the naff roadworks North of Coffs and on down to the turn off to Bellingen.  A birding guide to the Bellingen-Dorrigo area said to take the North Bank Rd and check the wetlands.  As I have commented previously the rea has been dry recently and so were the wetlands.  This was a bit of a bugger because the road was pretty marginal for towing the camper up.  I pulled over to let some young-people-in-a-hurry past and was amused to find them stopped about 10 bends further on while a passenger examined their last 3 or 4 meals, parked on the verge (the meals as well as the car).

We found our way to Belligen but had a bit of difficulty finding the island of rainforest we were looking for.  I asked one, somewhat feral-looking, passer by and he waved his arms about a bit and said he didn't know.  Next dude in line had a dog with him but he just hauld on the dog's lead and giggled at us.  Have we walked into the set for  a Zombie movie or are these genuine disciples of Baron Samedi?  The local roosters definitely looked nervous!

Of course when Zombie #1 claimed no knowledge he was within about 20 metres of the start of the path and we found it as soon as we shut mouth and opened eyes.  It was dog unfriendly so I ducked in for a quick hoping Frances would not meet either the local mambo or (following our experience with Hosanna) the families from the nearby Christian Centre.

The rainforest was rather good but I couldn't quickly see any birds so returned.

Frances had had no interactions with locals (neither alive, dead or in-between) so we crossed into the more civilised part of town spotting a Memorial Hall PDQ and opposite it, a Memorial to David Helfgott (a sometime local inhabitant).

they also had a restrained War Memorial in the park.

We then headed off up Waterfall Way.  This was better than North Bank Rd although still narrow and twisty.  I was driving carefully so as not to invoke Chunderpooch (in which I was successful) and enjoying the views.  The road eventually narrowed to one lane over a bridge across a waterfall.  we had to give way and there seemed to be a stream of folk coming down.  Eventually it seemed clear so I headed off finding a caravan appearing just as I got to the narrowest bit.  That is why accelerators and horns were invented,

After that there were no more vehicles.  Que?  Of course: some road works were evident a bit further on and the lights were causing pulses of traffic.

Eventually we emerged in the main street of Dorrigo  where they had a nice memorial in the main intersection.

The pub was one of the better examples of a verandah'd hostelry we came across.

Note also the red open top car coming past.  We had crossed with several of these on the way up and another several weer parked in front of a latte purveying establishment.  Presumably it was a Morgan Owners Club outing.

The scenery contnued excellent plut with views across to mountan ranges.

At Ebor we swung in to look at the Falls, ignoring canophobic signs as Tammy wasn't getting out of the car.  The top falls were rather excellent, ....

.. as was the view down the valley,

On to Armidale.  This was the Town Hall.

They had - as is commonly the case - all the churches in a heap.  This is the Anglican Cathedral into which we couldn't get (even though it was a Sunday)!

The nearby Park was very well endowed with memorials including this one to HMAS Armidale.

Moving on down the road this was spotted in Uralla and thought to be an unusual war Memorial.  Not so: this is the bushranger Thunderbolt, who seems to be a focus of their tourism industry.

A much smaller town somewhat further South was Bendemeer.  They had a rather ornate set of memorial gates ...

.. with small standing stones behind remembering various individuals.

That was pretty much the deal other than the final drive to Tamworth.  The required campground was found and a site selected.  Let us see what the morrow brings - we could tell that having gone back up the hill the night was going to bring colder weather!
Back to the index page.

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.

Back to the Index page

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).