Taken to Prison

One of the early trips we took during Brian and Daphne's visit was to the coast. They'd expressed an in colonial history and I thought they might be interested in seeing the prison at Trial Bay - an appropriate name for a gaol, but also perhaps one of the most gorgeous locations for such an institution. And, like any trip to the coast, there was much to see on the way.

We stopped for a while to view Ebor Falls. Fortunately, recent rain in the New England ranges near point lookout had generated a sufficient flow of water to make the falls look impressive.

A walk around the rim, revealed an ever deepening gorge with precipitous walls and secondary falls embedded in it ... and also a termite nest!

 

We travelled on to the Dorrigo National Park where the visitor centre now has some lovely murals depicting local wildlife and scenery as viewed from the perspective of the local Aboriginal tribe. It was time for some morning coffee after a quick walk along the sky-walk, which takes visitors our over the canopy of the sub-tropical rainforest below. Some of the magnificent views from the sky-walk are also attached here. Just look at the density of vegetation.

We got to Nambucca around lunch-time and after checking into our apartment hotel and a bite to eat we decided to head into the nearby back-blocks at Taylors Arm. I don't know who Taylor was or what happened to his arm, but the place is famous for Slim Dusty's Country and Western song about the put with no beer. The words to the song, which just about every Australian knows, are shown below. And the song came about because the tiny village of Taylors Arm was cut off from the outside world many years ago and the locals drank the pub dry while waiting patiently to get out.

This back country is very pretty - full of tree-clad mountains and green pastures. And here are Dot, Daphne and Brian (who's just about invisible) attempting to emulate the locals' feat of drinking the pub dry.

Inside it's a bit of a museum to Australian culture.

Trying to get back to Nambucca for an evening meal I took a wrong turning and found myself on an eternally winding dirt road which eventually headed in the right direction amidst gathering dusk. The next morning we piled back into our Rav4 and headed off to Trial Bay via Southwest Rocks and Arakun. How's this for the site of a prison? It was chosen because in the late 19th century most traffic between Sydney and Brisbane as by sea. The waters were often rough and the government of the day wanted to create an anchorage where vessels could safely ride out a storm. Someone had the idea of creating a large breakwater across Trial Bay near Southwest Rocks to provide safe waters and to use prisoners for the job and providing them with useful skills in the process.

Well, the construction job met with a series of disasters and never completed. All that remains of it is the short piece show in one of the pictures below. It wasn't the prisoners' fault that the job tanked. However, the first world war came along and the prison was used to house enemy aliens instead. So a variety of Germans and other nationalities found the way there - hence the word HUNs on the graffiti wall. Some of those assigned to Trial Bay were professionals and one, a doctor, was allowed to establish a medical practice besieged by locals who needed to see a medical practitioner.

After that war, the prison was abandoned and eventually stripped of fixtures and fittings to leave today's skeleton. It's also home to some local wildlife as well as being a museum.

After the short drive back to Nambucca, we took a walk along the estuary of the Nambucca River - pictured here from our bedroom window - nice spot, eh?

We came to a most peculiar breakwater - this time a successful one - which stretched perhaps a kilometre. Its wall was made from numerous  large rocks like those shown here and most had been decorated by families or social groups of one kind or another.

And so we came to the end of a perfect day, with the sun setting over the Nambucca River.

AS

A Trip Out West

It has been many weeks since my last post and I anticipate that some of my readers will have drifted away. Well, this is the start of an avalanche of new posts concerning the visit to Australia of my brother Brian and his wife Daphne from Plymouth in the UK. All up they spent a month with us and we travelled long distances. The posts will not necessarily be in chronological order, but that doesn't matter. What does matter is the collection of unusual and often stunning sights that we saw.

I'll start with a 2-day excursion we took out west to Narrabri, a small town on the flat western plains. Brian and Daphne joined us in early to mid-March at a time of year (Autumn Australian style) when temperatures would be cooling down. So we encountered relatively mild 30+ degrees C on this trip.

We took the back route to Narrabri through magnificent scenery much of the way. The route wound through the little villages of Bundarra and Bingara before taking the long Killarney Gap road across the Nandewar ranges to the western plains. Shortly after leaving Bundarra we took a side trip to see one of this country's great inland storages - Copeton Dam on the Gwydir river. As you can see from this first picture, the dam wall is immense.

And the second show the lake impounded behind. Because of a very long drought the lake is now only 17% of capacity so you can perhaps imagine the scene when it's full.

After Copeton, when headed down the Gwydir Rive to Bingara. By our standards, this is quite a large river and a major tributary of the Murray-Darling system. At this point the water still has about 2000 km to go to reach the sea.

At Bingara, shown here from a lookout over the town, we had morning coffee at the glorious Art-Deco cafe in the main street after we were shown around the Art-Deco interior of the Roxy Theatre - the subject of an earlier post. To see more about the theatre and its attached Greek cafe visit: http://www.roxybingara.com.au/about-the-roxy/ . Its amazing that such a small town should have such a facility.

Leaving Bingara, we took the road to Killarney Gap and after maybe 40 km we saw an intriguing sign directing us to a view of glaciated rocks. This immediately intrigued me since I know that no part of this area was glaciated during the last ice age which ended over 10,000 years ago. I suspected a hoax, but it wasn't! The glaciated pavement you see here was formed 220 million years ago!! Where else in the world could you see such a formation?

As the road wound up through the Killarney Gap the scenery became ever more grand. The Nandewars have a volcanic origin demonstrated with these images of volcanic plugs and the wonderful rock formation at a reserve called Sawn Rocks.

Sawn Rocks look like a church organ made from columnar basalt and this visit added to the famous sights of columnar basalt I've visited. Almost 50 years ago I saw the Giants Causeway in northern Ireland and around 16 years ago I took a short boat trip from the Island of Mull in Scotland's Inner Hebrides to the famous Fingal's Cave on the Island of Staffa. This image is a least their equal visually but is largely unknown!

After a restful night staying at Tommo's motel in Narrabri - much better than the name seemed to suggest - we headed into the long line of dramatic mountains lying east of the town. They rise sharply from the flat plain to an altitude of well over 1500 m (4900 feet). Just have a look at this gorgeous scenery.

And here I am standing on top of Mount Kaputar (1510 m) which is reach by road followed by a flight of steps from the car park below.

After Kaputar, we headed off to the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), at the Paul Wild Observatory - an array of six 22-m antennas used for radio astronomy located about 25 km west of Narrabri. The moveable dishes are on something like 6 km of 'railway' track and are part of an even larger collection of radio telescopes separated by some 300 km. So this facility is world-class and has a visitor centre where one can watch on a computer screen the signals being received from deep space. The centre is also surrounded by astronomical sculptures like the one shown here: very pretty.

And, some of the local  wild-life hops around the facility. We saw a pod of kangaroos like this little fellow here.

The final image from this trip is a field of cotton getting ready for harvest. Theses cotton bushes are rather on the low side, which I presume reflects the low rainfall and small amount of irrigation water in major storages. Still, Brian and Daphne were interested in seeing a real cotton field. At, at the moment, I have a rather large grant - with two others - from Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation (Cotton).

Come on down to visit us and you can see these things for yourselves.

AS

Carmen

After all those long New Zealand posts, which may have tired some readers, this one is very brief.

Three days ago I went to the opera - live opera here in Armidale  - performed by Opera New England. I won't go into the story - that's on the web anyway - but just want to say what a pleasure it was to hear Bizet's famous Carmen performed live on stage in front of me. And it was in a town of about 25,000 people a long way from any large city. The orchestra was local, but I have to acknowledge that many of the singers came from other places.

Anyway, the performance was entertaining, electric, well-staged and lighted, fast paced, and generally well sung by a very young cast of performers at the early stage of their careers. I was completely hooked. The auditorium was almost full and the audience was enthusiastic. See http://operanewengland.com/ and click on an excerpt from the performance.

AS

Around New Plymouth

This is my last post for the New Zealand visit, despite visiting the Waitomo glow-worm caves on our return trip to Auckland. However, photography was more or less banned at the caves for obvious reasons.

During Bec's marathon ascent of Taranaki / Egmont we spent relaxing time exploring New Plymouth. But before I get on to that I simply have to show just a few pictures of that great volcano. Incidentally, Japanese and other film producers have shot films with Japanese subject matter using Taranaki as a substitute for Fuji. I love the first image with the snow-capped summit rising above a misty shroud. The second shows two trampers setting off for the climb - but Bec isn't on of them. And the third was taken from one of the trails ascending the mountain a little further up.

Back to town. I Dot and Max spent some time on the beach - walking, playing with some of the abundant drift-wood, and writing Max's name.

Apart from this, we did some necessary shopping, enjoyed lunch, and visited the Tourist information office where Max could experiment with all sorts of computer game - some produced locally. The next day saw us visit a local prize-winning garden, examine local natural history and Maori culture, do some more walking, and - for Bec and me - hire a bike for a coastal ride. Let the pictures tell their own story. Yes, that's the Italian flag flying in the garden!

I wouldn't want to mix with this cousin of Australia's Great White shark in the water! But I might be able to stroke this extinct flightless bird.

As for Kiwis, we never saw one alive - though the secretive bird can be found in the wild if you know where to look.

The coastal ride took across this artistic modern bridge and here I've used it to frame my now favourite mountain - Taranaki / Egmont some 20 km away.

AS