March 7 back in the burbs!

We’re home after almost 7 weeks on the road - hard to believe, but we travelled over 9000 kilometres. 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 did no reach much above 20C. What amazing contrasts!

Our mini garden welcomed us with the last of its summer fruit - half kilogram 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 flypast every day when we’re away to see if we are 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 Blackbird 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 Butcherbird both heralding their presence with glorious melodic song. I know lots of people don’t like Butcherbirds, but their song is beautiful and in the end all the birds seem to know they have 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 then again I love the water - tranquil Port Welshpool on the way home

Lindsay’s newest toy. A motorised thing to make parking the van easier. It works like a dream - once you’ve got it going in the right direction!

A pile of Road Beanies - they kept my hands busy while my eyes wandered!

A wonderful journey through just a corner of our wide brown land

March 4 - The Transit of Venus and banksias!

The rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena has fascinated polymaths like Ptolemy, Horrocks, and Kepler. And you say, ....? 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 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.” 

Of course he was talking about the east coast of what was to become NSW, but the southeast coast of Gippsland is a veritable jungle of dense trees named banksias for this prodigious botanist. I have 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 fruit returning to the earth, seed pod mouths agape

A poor gnarled specimen

Bark like cankerous elephant skin

A wee May Gibbs Banksia man

The Banksia flower is an astonishing thing

Quite fascinating- and the ants thought so too!

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

Intersting new growth

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

March 1 to 3 Mallacoota

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 far northweat of NSW grew! Our trip has thus far taken us from the most north-westerly point of NSW to here, the almost south-easterly point. 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 1906