March 7 - back in the burbs!

We’re home after almost 7 weeks on the road - hard to believe, but we travelled over 9000 km. Lindsay counted many hundreds of birds while I peered at plants and rocks and, like a Tricoteuse, knitted as kilometre after kilometre crunched under our wheels - 14 beanies to show for those many Kms!

Such a wonderful country - in spite of the heat.  We feel so lucky to be able to travel like this. Doesn’t cost much - around $100 a day for fuel and camping fees.  so it’s affordable, relatively speaking.

For 5 of those 7 weeks the temperatures were close to, or over, 40C so staying cool and hydrated was a high priority. The body breathed a sigh of relief when we hit temps in the 30s as we travelled ‘closer’ to home. After such desiccating heat for so much of our trip, our last day of travel was a bit of a shock. It began with gale force winds, beating rain and hail and didn’t get much above 20C. What amazing contrasts!

Our mini garden welcomed us with the last of its summer fruit - half kg of tomatoes some of which were almost liquid, but others green (fried green tomatoes for breakfast this morning - yum!), and a basin of juicy, almost melting, figs oozing sweet bubbles of syrup. Thank goodness for irrigation - on a minor home-front scale of course!!! 

After a day, the birds returned and have been buzzing around since keeping a watchful eye on our movements in case we escape too soon. I reckon they do a fly passed every day when we’re away to see if we’re there. Our ‘resident’ doves arrived back and walked up and down pretending to forage on the front terrace in a little welcome home ‘now you’re back, feed me’ display, the mynas came warily back a day later and patiently took their turn at the water bath.  A female black bird picked up the scent of disturbed soil as we repositioned pots from under the tree and for the last couple of days has been pecking about looking for goodies. And we got a surprise visit from a pied currawong and a young grey butcher bird both  heralding their presence with glorious melodic song. I know lots of people don’t like butcher birds, but their song is beautiful and in the end all the birds seem to know they’ve got to get along if they want to hang around our place. Wonderful to come home to our little garden and birds!

So now clearing away and sorting, repairs etc etc and then on to .......... 

Thanks for sharing our journey. Next up the Arctic! Boy talk about extremes!  A bientot .....

On the road. We’ve had a little sponge bath since then!

I like!

But there again I love the water - tranquil Port Welshpool on the way home

This is just to show Lindsay’s newest toy (the blue thing)  - a motorised thingo to make parking the van easier. It works like a dream - once you’ve got it going in the right direction!

Road Beanies

March 4 - The Transit of Venus and banksias!

The rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena has fascinated polymaths like Ptolemy, Horrocks, Kepler. And you say, so ....? It is what brought Joseph Banks to Australia.  If Linnæus, Swedish naturalist and father of modern taxonomy, had his way Australia would have been called Banksia in honour of the man who collected and described a vast collection of plants from this new country - 1770 and exotic flora! 

Joseph Banks noted in his diary: “The countrey this morn rose in gentle sloping hills which had the appearance of the highest fertility, every hill seemd to be cloth’d with trees of no mean size.” 

Well of course he was talking about the east coast of what was to be NSW, but the south east coast of Gippsland is a veritable jungle of dense trees named banksias for this prodigious botanist. No idea of their particular species, but when we stopped for lunch in Cape Conran National Park we were surrounded by them and I spent a wee while poking around checking them out. 

A banksia returning to the earth, mouths agape.

A poor old specimen

The bark like cankerous elephant skin.

A wee May Gibbs Banksia man

The flower an astonishing thing

Zoom in! Quite fascinating- and the ants thought so too!

Not the prettiest of trees but ancient and dependent in part on fire for their survival



This wee creature had me spell bound watching his gymnastics on a blade of grass

March 1 to 4 - Mallacoota

And here we are in Mallacoota - hopefully not hemmed in by bushfires! close to the SE corner of NSW. I know, we’re in Victoria, but we couldn’t quite get in to the SE border point of NSW so this will have to suffice. What started out as a trip to corner country in the afar NW sort of grew! Our trip has thus far taken us from the most north westerly point of NSW to here, the almost south easterly point of NSW. The countryside in between has been quite wonderful in its diversity, colour and form. From parched desert across plains and rivers through tall alpine land to Dorothea’s jewel-seas. What a journey! I feel a poem coming on! 

I love a sunburnt country, 

A land of sweeping plains, 

Of ragged mountain ranges, 

Of droughts and flooding rains. 

I love her far horizons, 

I love her jewel-sea, 

Her beauty and her terror 

The wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mackeller

February 2 - WWI and WWII a coast at risk!

Underground bunkers, sea planes anchored in Betka river, German mines! 

I’m not a war buff by any stretch of the imagination, but - the mind boggles! Yesterday we visited a WWII Bunker. But rewind a century or so to 1917, the Germain Raider Wolf laid mines in southern waters ultimately destroying 14 allied ships. Thirty of those mines were secretly laid near Gabo Island on the night of 3 July.

And the underground bunker? It was the headquarters of the RAAF Coastal Intelligence for the region for radio surveillance during WWII. It was strategically located to monitor and protect the rather isolated south-east coast. With a radar station on Gabo Island and a dedicated phone line (costing £40,000 to build) to Preston Town Hall - yes indeed! where an anti-aircraft operations room was set up, we southern Victorians were sort of protected - except for those poor 38 seamen whose lives were lost on the freighter ‘Iron Crown’ after it was torpedoed. 

So much ones learns on the road! It’s a bit like Salome’s dance of the seven veils. Layers of ignorance gradually being stripped away - in my case there’s a baffling, and most likely unknown, number of ‘veils’ needing removal. 

This was it built as an air raid shelter or fortification. 

February 26 to the first day of Autumn!

Such contrasts as we’ve travelled south from Bourke! Gradually we snuck up on green - crops and rich grazing, less stressed trees. South from Lake Cargelligo, Rankin Springs is a lovely little rest spot in the NSW Riverina. Lots of green, trees - and a flock of beautiful Major Mitchell (or pink) cockatoos in a stand of tall Kurrajong trees. Worth a revisit. 

Veering south-east from there, we headed for high country and the Snowy Mountain highway.  A pit stop for lunch in Tumut where my lovely man brought me a small bunch of Crepe Myrtle to admire while I chomped on a corned beef and pickle sanger.  I love these plants - the colours and delicate softness of the flowers, but I have never really looked closely at the individual flowers. What a surprise! 

What seems like bunches of tiny flowers is actually a bunch of petals of an individual flower on a panicle of flowers. The petals which are crinkled and curled in and around themselves, are attach with thin stalks to the pedicle(? I think that’s what it’s called). Pop into your garden and start peeking. It’s worth the effort to look into the hearts of flowers, all flowers - they are so intricate and beautiful. 

And then it was south-east and upward into summer alps - well almost. Cooma and Bombala. We were aiming for Mallacoota. Why? Why not! 

Some of you familiar with Canberra and surrounds will know about getting to the coast - the infamous Clyde and Brown mountains with their steep hairpin descents. With van in tow, we decided not to tackle either, selecting instead a ‘less’ steep road down from the high country via Mount Imlay, south from both those two brutes. 

The Imlay Road starts just south of Bombala, which I discovered was proposed as the site of the parliamentary seat of Australia because it was half way between Sydney and Melbourne; the rest is history. We made it down to sea level. 

More anon .......

Who’s looking at who!

Rather good silo artwork at Weethalle. 

Very fractal! Very origami producing a huge surface area, a trick nature employs for lots of purpose. The lungs for oxygen exchange, the folding of the cortex of the brain to fit it all in! And other things .......



The underside.





Mt Kosciuszko National Park. It reminded me of Scotland .



Peace and tranquility in Mallacoota- but it’s crowded!

February 24 - the Dowling Track

A few days rest so I’m back tracking a little to catch up. 

There are only so many roads in and out of Bourke and I reckon we’ve travelled just about all of them - those we can take our rig, goes without saying! A week ago on our long, slow homeward journey, we travelling one more - The Dowling Track linking Quilpie and Bourke through the ‘Plains of Promise’. We started the track from Yowah so we joined the historic track part way at Hungerford on the NSW-Qld border - another gate to open and close along the dog fence!

The track was named after explorer and pastoralist, Vincent Dowling who, with other early pioneers, explored this area looking for a new life and new opportunities. Pretty dry country at the moment, but they saw opportunities and a number of stations were established. Any promises the area might hold depends critically on when you’re there!

This seemingly harsh arid area attracted others such as author Henry Lawson who walked from Bourke to Hungerford and back in the sizzling summer heat looking for work in the 1890s. Lawson, who seemed to be an ‘unhappy’ harried wanderer, lived in Bourke for a time and subsequently wrote, “if you know Bourke, you know Australia.”  Interesting observation, but indeed he could be right. Perseverance sort of sums it up! There’s a river ‘running’ through it so the area is productive - some of the time. 

And then we were heading further south ....

You might think that all these red roads are the same. Not so! The vegetation varies as does the colour of the dirt or sand - and some are less rough than others!!!!

The border gate between Qld and NSW at Hungerford. Note there’s an airport here - most outback places have an airport or runway or at the very least a part of the road is marked as a landing strip. Population at Hungerford is 20 odd. Nice neat little place.

Approaching Brindingabba Creek. You hold your breath as you approach ’river’ crossings hoping that there will be water. This one .....

The poor old Brindingabba Creek was rather a sad sight.

The pub at Fords Bridge. Population less than 10, some day 4. I guess it depends on where you draw city limits!

Fords Bridge is on the Warrego River.

Great! some water......

But only in occasional puddles