Holiday Wrap 4

The next day we travelled through beautiful farmland, Cowra,Young, Cootamundra, Junee, to Wagga Wagga then Jindera. It was great to renew with Dave and Pam Suters. Dave is retired, but has a farm of a few hundred acres to keep him active and a big vegie garden. Pam still works, at Woolworths. We had a barbie and chewed the fat.

Good mates

Dave and Pam  with new grandchild

Wangaratta was our next stop, for Lib's 40 year high school reunion

 I reckon Lib has held up better than most

We stayed with our great friends Di and Ow

On our way home we visited Moll and Bill

Holiday Wrap 3

We drove slowly into Yamba, on the opposite (south) side of the Clarence River to Illuka. thinking we'd stay one night only and make our way leisurely through NSW to Jindera near Albury, fishing in creeks and rivers along the way, where I had arranged to be with my long standing friend Dave Suters on the 23 Nov.

The caravan park manager said he had nothing available for one night, but a cabin for two nights. We took it and had an wonderful couple of days at Yamba, a fantastic holiday place, a mixture of raw natural beauty and modern development and commerce, with so much to see and do in the close proximity. By this point we were totally blown away by the magnificent scenery we had experienced in SE Qld and northern NSW.
Not to mention the contrast through central NSW with its rich cultural heritage and inland calm. It is unbelievable almost, what a wonderful country it is.

The weather at Yamba was perfect, the storms had stopped. We fished and fished but didn't catch anything, it didn't matter.

This kid was 7 years old, I spoke to his parents

Good try Lib, but no fish

Young lovers on the Yamba breakwater

From Yamba we had two days to get to Jindera. Over the range and through the guts. Magnificent country. Rich farmland, but dry as for the most part. After 10 hours driving we got to Mudgee, a big storm hit as we did late in the day. The whole town almost was booked out, there was a festival of sorts on, we eventually found a Park cabin some way out of town, by the skin of our teeth. It turned out a lucky break.

It had a big old shearing shed with cooking facilities, table tennis, billiards,and an old duke box. I played Neil Diamond and Simon and Garfunkel and Bob Dylan

Lib won tabletennis, I was seeing double

Holiday Wrap 2

I should have mentioned that my friend Ian from Canada, who visited us last winter and took a trip to Qld with his son Jethro, told us about his visit to Lamington National Park and the incredible bird life there, and showed us lots of photos of parrots climbing over him, including walking on his bald head. Not only King Parrots and Crimson Rosellas but Satin and Regent Bower birds and honeyeaters. This was great for him, an expat and bird lover who spends much time in Canada dreaming of the Australian bush and it's amazing flora and fauna.

Ian and Jethro left us in August and we didn't hear from him for a couple of months so I emailed asking how he was and how had he settled down to life back in Canada. He replied that he had been seriously ill and had done two stints in hospital. At first he thought his lack of energy was jet lag but it didn't go away and he was diagnosed with psittacosis or parrot fever. The severity of this illness is variable but he was very ill. It affects the lungs and the brain and is treated with antibiotics.

So we did not let the birds walk on us as they tried to do and as we observed them doing with the overseas tourists at the O'Reilly's Lodge where the birds are fed seed daily as a tourist amusement as they have been for several decades. I wondered how many of those tourists would be crook a month later.

Interesting also on the subject of birds, was the large area of dead trees we passed through near Kyogle in NSW. Noticeable was the pinging of bellbirds. Again, after we left Yamba and crossed the Divide on a minor road somewhere near Ebor there were large areas of dead trees and again the mournful pinging that accompanies, that which we used to have at home before the the 2009 heatwave that caused the bellbirds to move on, which I posted about soon after.

Ian recommended that we stay at Woody Head near Illuka, where the campground is on the beach almost. Leaving Evan's Head we did so, less than an hour's drive. A beautiful place.

We set up a tarp from van to trees

 

Check out the the storm clouds

A serious storm in the making

Big roo went for swim

It rained all through cooking and eating, we ate off our laps in the car

The morning after, as much as we loved it at Woody Head, the mozzies and biting flies settled it for us, we moved on.

Holiday Wrap Up

A couple of weeks have gone by since my last post. I've been too tired at night to write. I just want to sit and watch a bit of TV or go to bed and sleep. I have been so busy with work and many things. But tired as I am tonight, and with an aching ankle that I must have stretched climbing a tree today, I do want to continue my summary of our holiday in November. My intention is to condense two weeks into a short post so that I can move on to more recent thoughts in my next post.

Day 4 we went to Noosa. The freeway system with all the exits onto roudabouts had us going round and round. I have never seen so many roundabouts. Because of all the rotations the signs to localities all seemed out of kilter to my inbuilt sense of direction after looking at maps. I was totally bamboozled. When we did get somewhere where there may well have been nice beaches nearby it was terribly crowded and parking was a problem. The whole area seemed to be highly developed along some US style plan. Frankly it gave us the the Heebeejeebies and we quickly got out of there.

On the way out we did find a great place after following a sign to a lookout where the views were 360 and spectacular, somewhere close to Cooroy. There was a school group learning to abseil down the rock face. We took the Mary Valley Tourist road to Gympie where we did a shop and headed back to Eumendie for lunch. Lovely scenery along the Blackall range to Maleny where we looked for accomm, settling on a cabin in a tourist park on the way down the hill to Landsborough. Frankly it was a bit of a dump and overpriced and a co-tenant sang country songs half the night so we hit the road south next day having determined to get to the Lamington National Park to spend the next couple of days, We drove straight through Brisbane on the freeway turning off at Nerang.

After a look at Binna Burra (we didn't like the camp site they gave us, right next to a kiosk thing) we moved on to O'Reilly's campground and put up our little tent. The scenery on the way up was sensational, it was an hours climb up from Canungra along some very narrow and windy roads. With our little butane gas stoves we cooked up a feed of lamb chops and just beat the thunderstorm which crashed all around. It rained pretty hard for a few hours but we kept dry in the tent.

  We stayed two nights and loved the rainforest, the abundant bird life and the walks.

Morgan's Falls

The second night was another storm, we just managed to get dinner in before the deluge.

By this time we still hadn't visited a beach or put a rod in so we farewelled Lamington and headed towards Evan's Head via Beaudesert, Kyogle, Casino an Lismore. We lunched by a little creek near Grevillea where I saw a Scarlet Headed honeyeaters. We drove through a fierce storm near Lismore.

Dingo Creek

We booked a cabin at Evan's Head for three nights and loved our stay there so stayed a fourth.We couldn't catch a fish but we did get caught one evening fishing without the Aerogard and were mercilessly bitten by sandflies which caused us grief for weeks after with unbelievable itchiness. We had a storm close by every night.

I must be a crook fisherman, but I don't mind, I don't like killing the poor things these days

Tiredness is claiming me. I'll have to go to bed. I'll finish the holiday tomorrow night.

Maroochydore

Day 3 of our holiday was a Sunday. After leaving Narrabri we stopped at Moree for shopping and Inglewood for lunch, a picnic in the park. It was on the warm side, and a hungry family of magpies and honeyeaters of a type unfamiliar to me provided entertainment. I remembered stopping in the same park for lunch nearly 40 years earlier on a tour from Gatton college to the New England Tablelands.

The roads were quiet and the travelling leisurely till we passed Warwick and started the descent on the eastern side of the divide, where the traffic increased and the tone of it changed. Other drivers were more aggressive and less communicative and responsive to gesture and signal as it was apparent we were approaching a city. Into Brisbane along a large freeway we went, unsure where to exit to find the most expedient route to the Sunshine Coast which we had decided was our destination for that night.

Dark grey clouds massed mid afternoon as we inadvertently ended up in some hilly part of Brisbane searching for the main highway north. With perfect adverse timing the heavens opened and a gale blew up to a violent storm that proved to be the first of nine in the days to follow. These storms seemed to follow us but in fact they were localized yet widespread throughout SE Qld and north east NSW, and the pattern was for lovely calm sunny mornings which preceded a build up of heavy cloud after lunch culminating in an electrical show with booming thunder and torrential downpour late in the afternoon. Visibility was minimal as we eventually found the main road north. We turned off at Caboolture and nearly had our head on accident soon after as heavy impatient oncoming traffic returned to Brisbane after the weekend.

Badly shaken we continued, thinking Maroochydore would be a suitable overnight stop. We passed a few caravan parks and motels without stopping much to our regret later as Maroochydore was all built up high rise apartments and shopping precincts with no obvious place for late arrival overnighters to find accommodation. We eventually found a caravan park with a palatial restaurant at the front but it had no vacancy. It was now dark, we were tired and exasperated but had no choice but to drive about looking for a motel. We did find one at Mudjimba fortunately. The owner/manager was a most hospitable man who said our predicament was not uncommon in his experience. He was the only old fashioned motel around, most of the other motels had been razed and new high rises built necessarily to increase turnover to pay huge council rates. He suggested on hearing we were looking for a possible retirement place that we try the the Mary River Valley or Gympie where development had not yet reached and to buy in would be more affordable.

Lib, a great improviser with food, prepared a top meal with the microwave and our camping stocks as we watched the late news on TV showing the storm damage wreaked on Brisbane that day. It was washed down with good wine and we slept well until the noise of aeroplanes woke us early, an airport being nearby.

Maroochydore is much changed from the the seaside village described to me by Louise Bullen, a girl I went out with a couple of times more than forty years ago, who wrote to me from the camping ground after finishing her last year at Corowa CEGS and travelling there on her own to live in a one man tent for awhile and "find herself".  I do wonder what became of Louise. I hope she has had a good life and is in good health.      

Lunch at Gilgandra

Having said that our Friday evening in the town of Forbes was quiet, the night was less so. The motel was next to the railway station and at some point not long after we retired a train that must have been about 5 miles long went past, followed by a gathering of noisy hoons somewhere nearby who kept up the revelry for hours according to Lib, although the recall is vague to me who was tired enough to sleep well in spite of it.

After a travellers pantry breakfast in the motel we visited the info centre in Forbes in the old railway station building where the life story of bushranger Ben Hall was prominent. A free movie of 20 minutes on the re-enactment of Ben Hall's brief criminal career and violent death was informative and entertaining and a visit to the cemetery was the result. Apparently Ben Hall was a good man until perverted by corrupt police which seems a similar story to the folklore of Ned Kelly. I don't doubt the veracity of it.

We visited 'The Dish' somewhere near Parkes where we enjoyed morning coffee and reached Gilgandra for lunch, a picnic from the esky ( the makings brought from Gembrook) in the park near the town swimming pool. It was warm to hot but pleasant. We turned off the Newell Hwy here taking the road to Coonamble so that we could relate to Rickyralph next time we see him. He has been visiting there and his relatives ever since I have known him (50 years) so I wanted to take a look. It's also good to get off the main drag a bit. By now the drought, which was noticeable previously, was cruelly obvious, with no hint of green, and little grass, even dried and brown, and hardly any stock. Desolate. The roadside was littered with bottles and cans it looked like God had forsaken this part of the world. Amazing it was to me that there were floods in Coonamble a year or so ago but I reckon it would not have rained a drop since. The Castlereagh River was not flowing and was but a sad series of waterholes in which some hardy kids swam and fished.

The Dish

Coonamble

 We then drove to Pilliga through the scrub. The roadside litter became appalling, and as we approached  Wee Waa we came into irrigated farmland and cotton crops. We stopped at Narrabri and took a cabin in a caravan park where we had a good rest and cooked up the meat we had brought from Gembrook for dinner. Narrabri looked prosperous, a base for agribusiness on a large scale and an eye opener for a couple of southern hillbillies.

From Gembrook to Forbes

On day one of our recent holiday Lib and I rose about 6am and did some final chores and packing and drove off about 8 o'clock. We fuelled up at Yarra Glen and bought a coffee to go. I talked about our family history as we went through Dixon's Creek, explaining to Lib how Lyle and Elvie spent their first year or two of marriage on a few hundred acres there. And of their neighbours the Hargreaves who were to be lifelong friends. Lib found it interesting and let me rave.

Eildon weir was nearly full. I told Lib about my introduction to fishing by George Edwards, Bill's father. My first catch was a brown trout in the Goulburn river where we camped overnight with one of George's WW11 army mates and his son. Shortly after that again with the Edwards, I spent several days at Christmas camping at Bonnie Doon. Billy and I caught 52 redfin in an hour. It was 1967 probably, I can't be sure. Bill and I were supposed to be giving up smoking, but we sneaked a few km along the railway line and bought some fags. When we caught the fish we rowed across the lake to have a smoke on the sly but put our rods in and bang it was on, fish after fish.

After Swanpool we saw the result of a small mini tornado that had ripped through some months earlier. A strip of trees had been broken apart, some knocked over, others with limbs missing, and others sort of sheared of halfway up. It was a peculiar sight.

We went into Benalla which we had not done for many years, since the freeway bypassed. When I lived in Wang you had to go into Benalla to pick up the Hume unless you you turned off at Swanpool and went the back way through Mollyullah and Greta, which takes longer. Benalla looked great. We went up the old Hume a little way and took the Yarrawonga Rd. We cut across on a minor road from Lake Rowan to pick up what looked like a more direct route to Echuca but we must have taken a wrong turn and soon we were having quite a time driving along narrowing dirt roads, with a dead end twice, through wheat and canola crops.

We eventually found some bitumen. We burst out laughing when we saw an election poster on a tree with Sophie Mirabella's face beaming. It was just the funniest thing, given that she got the arse from Indi, losing the unloseable safe national seat. She was a regular on Q+A and Gord can't stand her. I should have climbed the tree and taken the poster as a souvenir for him.

We lunched on salad rolls and water on the grass bank above the town beach at Corowa on the Murray. I could see I was going to be on a health food diet for the duration of this holiday. Lib said we both needed to lose weight. I was fine about it, I like healthy food.

At Tocumwal we again saw the aftermath of another mini tornado, this one more recent and perhaps even stronger. I'd hate to be in the path of one of those things. It reminded me that I saw a TV program about the Canberra bushfires of a few years ago. Apparently it was a mini tornado that blew that fire into Canberra from where it was burning but not threatening much. Very scary when you think about it.

As we went north through the Riverina it was a delight to see the various crops including rice plantings and the expansive dry land crops being harvested and paddocks dotted with hundreds of big bales of hay. The further north we got the drier it became. It was soon full on drought but the countryside was interesting, many old homesteads deserted over the decades when prosperous years enabled new houses perhaps, or maybe abandoned in droughts as people sold up to neighbours and farms got bigger to have a better chance. I'd like to study the history of  central NSW. I loved the towns with their big old pubs by the railway stations.

We settled on Forbes as our first stop for the night, in a motel, and went out for a Chinese meal. The town was very quiet we thought for a Friday evening. I guess a lot of farmers were busy harvesting.

West Wyalong

  

Forbes