Croajingalongadingdong it's Australia Day weekend

G’day motherland and the rest of the world,

This weekend the colony of Australia celebrated its national day which they cleverly named “Australia Day”. It marks the date the pale faced wigged up gentry of Europe brought a bunch of bread stealers to settle in Sydney Cove. It seems the locals these days celebrate this with concerts, fireworks, barbecues and trips to the beach. You don’t have to go far to find the beach – just hit water and you are more than likely to find beautiful stretches of sand and clear blue seas.

I travelled perhaps further than some to the far south east corner of Victoria, East Gippsland around Croajingalong National Park which is, apart from a few dirt tracks and the odd town, pretty much the same as when Captain Cook first spotted this part of the world and sailed on up the east coast to Botany Bay. I could list a dozen meaningless place names but I think above all else, this is simply Australia.

L'Orange

This weekend I travelled some different roads, which is always an achievement given there are only about three or four roads out of Canberra. My destination was the Central West of New South Wales for a pleasant trip in the country. Let me first start by telling you about summer in Australia, where pretty much non-stop rain and temperatures struggling to reach 20C on Saturday flew in the face of all that overconfident and boastful marketing of theirs! Where the bloody hell are ya? At home in front of a nice cosy fire, that’s bloody well where mate!

The rain did stop for about 10 minutes in the town of Cowra, a site semi-famous for a suicidal breakout of Japanese prisoners-of-war during WW2. There is much to commemorate this strange and sad story, not all of which is entirely tasteful but the Japanese influence lingers on and it must be the only small country town in Australia boasting a Japanese restaurant. There are some very beautiful Japanese Gardens perched atop a hill resonating calm and tranquillity in stark contrast to the events of 1944

(see http://www.anzacday.org.au/history/ww2/anecdotes/cowra.html)

An hour later through more rain was the considerably soggy town of Bathurst where I rendezvoused with two friends from Sydney, Caroline & Jill. Obviously we needed somewhere distinctive to meet, although the big gold panner was somewhat less distinctive than I was hoping. Certainly quite a low key big thing.

Bathurst has some old buildings and the like but is probably most famous for its motor racing circuit, Mount Panorama, which hosts some famous Aussie race every year. You can drive round the track, frustratingly at a speed limit of 60kph and in either direction. It was very un-Australian of me to drive the incorrect way round, but that’s more a result of naivety than anything else!

Further west is the town of Orange, claiming to be the fruit capital of Australia though not, as you would expect, specialising in oranges. It’s more apples, cherries and quite a few vineyards. This was our home for a couple of nights, staying in a wonderfully fake wood panelling and brown lino floor styled cabin. Fittingly we ate dinner in “Fare Dinkum”, claiming to be a true Aussie experience but really just like a Harvester with a few paintings on the walls. The boy who looked a bit like an Australian Napoleon Dynamite settled up our bill and told us there was nothing else to do in Orange, so an early night it was!

You may have figured by now this was more of a ‘quirky’ weekend than a classic scenery and adventure blockbuster, visiting the kind of places Bill Bryson has probably written about far better than I can. On a brighter Sunday we headed even further into the interior to Parkes and, nearby, the big dish. This actually isn’t another one of those stupid big things but an impressively functional giant telescope type dish. It was here, in a quiet part of nowhere, that the pictures from the moon landing first hit this planet of ours and then were beamed to around one half of the world’s population watching Neil’s one small step. It also provided the subject for a movie called ‘The Dish’, based on those events and one to watch on a rainy Sunday afternoon in the future.

Moaning about the weather was put into some perspective by a visit to a Lavender Farm near Parkes, where no harvest had been forthcoming for a couple of years thanks to the big dry which at one point lowered the local dam levels to 5% capacity. Still, a knowledgeable and friendly host was happy to show us some dried lavender things and contaminate the car with the smell for the rest of the day!

Back near Orange and smelling like old ladies, we visited a vineyard for some lovely tastings and worked off the mini-hangover with a trip up Mount Canobolas – the highest point west before you get to Perth!



By this stage of the day there was a nice big patch of blue sky, so making hay whilst the sun shined, we had a BBQ back at the caravan park. Fortunately we had the car park all to ourselves to spread out our brown plastic chairs and feast on a T-Bone and some veggies outside number 7.

On Monday I drove back to Canberra, mostly along the same roads that got me here so little excitement along the way. I stopped at a windfarm viewing area which was mildly diverting and a small cute village called Coarcar. It was absolutely dead and slightly creepy but I’m sure on weekends it is a bustling little place full of tea shops and craft fayres, negating the banjo plucking gun toting sofa on the veranda atmosphere of a dull Monday morning.



With few other options I stopped in Cowra again to pick up some food and made my way back along the Yass Valley, the sight of the Telstra Tower the beacon of homecoming, symbolising an afternoon of R&R before a four day week and another long weekend coming up for Australia Day.

Monkeying around

Life has been fairly routine so far this year, back to work, the odd walk here and there, slapping a steak on the barbie and that kind of thing. Like some magical switch triggered by Santa, summer has well and truly arrived with little rain and temperatures regularly in the mid 30s. As well as inducing siestas on a more regular basis this also seems to have got the spiders excited as I keep finding them everywhere lately, including a Redback who has taken up residency around my newly planted herbs.

Last weekend I took the short drive up to Mount Stromlo, where a number of boffins with crazy hair and white coats hang around to look through some telescopes. It was an interesting spot, especially as several of the buildings (and very very expensive equipment) are still derelict from the 2003 bushfires which swept through here.



This is a great time of year with the long summer days letting me catch some daylight after work, just when it tends to be cooling down a little (and the mozzies come out!). One evening saw me up Mount Ainslie again, where the clouds had bubbled up and the distant storm clouds provided colour.

Another night took me to the lake shores down by Yarralumla. I think this is one of the nicest parts around the lake… a bit more natural looking with long yellow grass wavering around stands of Eucalyptus trees. Of course, the public BBQs are never far away, nor is Canberra Marina!

The heat has continued this weekend, so perfect weather for some cricket and, er, roast lamb then?! The Indians were in town in the latter part of the week and the sledging seemed to be conspicuous by its absence as they took on a very average ACT invitational XI. I went on Saturday, where the cricket was pretty boring to be honest but pepped up by a read of the papers, a few beers and a trip to the legendary Thai Cornar afterwards.

On Sunday I visited Fyshwick Fresh Food Markets which are some markets selling fresh food (duh). I picked up my ingredients for what turned out an amazing slow cooked roast leg of lammmmmmmmmmmb. Four hours of the oven being on was the price to pay for such melt in the mouth deliciousness. And now, having walked dinner off watching the galahs and lorikeets as the daylight fades, I am very fat and contented!

The Green Bogey Christmas Tour 2007

Ah, Christmas in Australia. A strange time of searing heat and bucket and spade holidays interspersed with images of snowmen and Nat King Cole ditties. Christmas triggers the school holidays and typically leads to a mass migration to coastal areas – in fact, it’s almost as if the holidays are bigger than Christmas itself. For my part, I joined in the escape, in a round about kind of way, as I embarked on a road trip to Buderim in the Sunshine Coast of Queensland and back again. My journey took me inland through the outskirts of Sydney up to the Upper Hunter Valley, through New England, cutting down to the coast at Coffs Harbour and up through the Northern NSW and Southern Queensland Hinterland to the Sunny Coast. The trip back took the coastal route, stopping at a number of seaside towns, reaching Sydney for New Year, before returning to Canberra.

In total I clocked up 3822 kilometres, which is pretty much the distance across Australia from Sydney to Perth! Along the way I visited countless towns, national parks, a few beaches and saw huge swathes of World Heritage rainforest, many waterfalls, quite a few lookouts and several petrol stations. Taking in so much has made it tough to narrow down the pictures and stories, but I’ve attempted that in the following entries, so read on at your leisure and click on any pictures you wish to enlarge!

Hitting the country

The journey started in rather boring fashion up the highway to Sydney, but at least it was quick and painless. I trundled along through the western outskirts of Sydney stopping a few times along the Nepean River and passing through Richmond and Windsor (how original!). The journey really ramped up as I took the Putty Road towards the Upper Hunter Valley. This road pretty much runs alongside two vast national parks which form part of the Blue Mountains region, and features huge swathes of bushland cut by deep gorges, many of which are pretty inaccessible. Colo River was a nice accessible place to stop for a little while.

Eventually the road opens out into the Hunter Valley, where I stopped for a brief toilet break at some tiny place called Bulga, the toilets themselves pretty much in the middle of nowhere. A little further is the town of Singleton where I stopped the night, not before grabbing some dinner and taking it to a place called Lake St Clair which was beautiful in the evening light.

I decided to detour a little to take in the local scenery the next day and reached the town of Denman, a cutesy place set in a landscape of huge vineyards and rolling hills, many of which belong to the Rosemount estate.

At some point the Hunter Valley becomes New England. I’m not sure if it is at Scone (“The Horse Capital of Australia” apparently) but there were a few chavs about so it is making every effort to be a new England. I also saw the Scone Advocate was the local paper and thought I could happily advocate for scones.

The New England Highway was a surprisingly scenic route, through golden fields and past several high ranges, and was a pleasurable drive. The capital of the area is Tamworth, which is also known as the country music capital of Australia. Subsequently, despite a pleasant town centre where I stocked up on some new CDs and a creamy iced chocolaty coffee, it has plenty of kitsch, including the country music hands of fame! Wow! I didn’t know any of the names that were there, and frankly, couldn’t be bothered to look in much detail!

I escaped Tamworth without enduring too much country music and travelled on through beautiful countryside to Armidale, a far more respectable and classy affair. The town has several fine old buildings and was nice to amble around in the evening before settling down in my little cabin in a nearby caravan park! Armidale signalled the end of my foray into New England, and whilst I can’t quite see what is particularly English about it, the drive along this route was enjoyable, easy going and jolly pleasant.

Water Water Everywhere

Armidale is the place where you can cut down to the coast via “The Waterfall Way”, and I wasn’t going to pass up an opportunity to take the Waterfall Way. Whilst it’s a piece of clever marketing there is much to be said for the landscape around here, which includes six national parks, several of which form part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage area, and, of course, a number of waterfalls.

First up is Wollomombi Gorge and Falls, part of Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. I was here before 8 in the morning and pretty much had the place to myself, a nice start to the day.

A little further off the Waterfall Way is New England National Park. With my penchant for lookouts I headed for Point Lookout, at 1563 metres one of the highest points in NSW north of the Alps and, at that height at risk of being shrouded in the clouds. The clouds would come and go but now and again they would lift to reveal a large expanse of wilderness.



I took a little walk here which ended up being not so little. It was only a few kilometres but was a bit of a trek down slippery rocks and then back up again. Given the moisture around, everything was pretty lush and there were countless spider webs to walk through! The remaining lookouts were all clouded in and probably because of this I had a strong sense of being in a wild, remote place. The walk was nice but I was glad to be back at my car and ready for the next stop.

Ebor Falls was a much easier location to reach, and a perfect spot for some lunch. The Falls are in Guy Fawkes River National Park and literally plunge off the tablelands into the valleys which wind their way to the coast.





------ The Wonderful Wonga Walk ------

From Ebor Falls the road winds its way to the small town of Dorrigo. I’ll remember this place for the rollercoaster of emotions following the sad news of Nan passing away, which exacerbated my sense of being isolated in the middle of nowhere, a long long way from home. You might know I’m not really one for spiritualism but somehow it seemed fitting that I experienced the most captivating, serene and beautiful walk through a pristine natural landscape in memory of a wonderful woman.

The Wonga Walk in Dorrigo National Park isn’t exceptionally long or challenging but it takes in spectacular rainforest views, lush flora and exquisite fauna and is capped by the awe inspiring Crystal Shower Falls (straight out of a Timotei advert!)

Crystal Shower Falls actually comes about half way through the walk, just as you are getting a little sweaty, so the fact that you can walk behind it and catch some of the spray is a blessing!

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Back on the Waterfall Way, and unsurprisingly there are some more waterfalls to be seen, this beautiful little number near Dorrigo called Dangar Falls.



Just before leaving the tablelands and winding down to the coast, a short detour leads to a lookout over Bellinger River National Park, where both myself and the car where just about ready for a well earned rest.



And with that the Waterfall Way heads on down into the valley, ending at the cute town of Bellingen, a perfect place after a night of camping on a windy hill to recharge and reflect with some brekkie on the deck.