Spring is a wonderful time to be a volunteer at the beautiful Tilligerry Habitat. Ian and I man the information centre there every Sunday and Ian also administers the website and Facebook page. It has started to get quite busy there lately, I suspect this is partly because it was featured on TV as part of Sydney Weekender's coverage of Port Stephens but I like to think Ian's efforts to increase the web presence has helped too, he puts some excellent photos on Facebook and has gathered quite a number of followers.
What used to be a relaxing day sitting on the deck reading or taking it in turns to go off into the bush and snap some wildlife in between talking to the occasional guest has turned in to a full on work day the last couple of weekends with over fifty visitors coming through each day, we enjoy it though and it is great to see people appreciating the place.
The resident flora and fauna give excellent value at this time of year, koalas are on the move looking for mates so are more likely to be seen and the birds, lizards and butterflies put on a real show. Most birds are either nesting or have young chicks, like the Eastern Yellow Robin in the picture and the native plants are offering up plenty of food for the Honeyeaters, there are over 60 different types of honeyeater and the one pictured is a White Cheeked Honeyeater.
I am not very good at identifying birds yet and lot of those we see around here have yellow on them and look similar so I have to keep referring to my bird book to find out what I have seen.
There was a koala quite near the information centre yesterday, they don't move much so if one is in a position where we can't get a very good photo for Ian to use, we take it in turns to go back to it every hour or so to see if it has got itself into a more photogenic pose. Yesterday's koala was particularly tricky so I was setting off to check on it when the biggest Brown Snake imaginable shot across the path in front of me! It must have been 5 feet long and moved incredibly quickly. The Brown Snake is one of Australia's deadliest creatures and believe me, we have a few but they are up there near the top of the 'most dangerous' list. As I ran puffing and sweating into the visitors centre babbling about seeing the biggest Brown Snake in the world Ian asked, "Did you get a picture of it?"
Spring has also seen me attempting to grow some veggies again. I had a go last year but as we live on sand I wasn't very successful, so this year Ian has put his carpentry skills to good use again and built me some raised beds to give the veggies a decent depth of compost to grow in. So far everything is growing and we are looking forward to being self sufficient in the green grocery department quite soon. Apparently tomatoes and onions can be grown all year round here so I am hoping to be able to stagger the crops a bit and not have a situation like my Dad used to where he would keep the whole village supplied with tomatoes and cucumbers for a few weeks then have none for the rest of the year.
After the success of the bike shed Ian made from pallets, the car returned home with this lot on top the other day so I am hoping this means a garden shed is on the cards.
Mid September found us heading up to the beautiful Grassy Head Hideaway for a few days with our friends Tim and Virginia. It was the very beginning of Spring so can slip back into winter weather unexpectedly but we were very lucky enjoying, pretty much, wall to wall sunshine.
Grassy Head is on a particularly gorgeous stretch of coast about three hours north of us, the beaches are glorious and very popular with surfers (and sharks) and the roads are lined with dense woodland. Most of the surrounding towns are worth a visit, we particularly like South West Rocks and the Smoky Cape lighthouse, while Macksville has all a visitor could need in terms of shops, restaurants and entertainment.
The others are all very understanding that most places are still new to me and this trip they took me to see Bellingen, which was originally built as an inland port for the timber industry in the area because boats could not navigate past that point of the Bellinger River. It is also in the middle of rich agricultural land which led to Bellingen becoming quite a wealthy little town. The buildings are clearly listed because the interiors as well as the exteriors are untouched and there are a smattering of deco buildings there too. The town is now home to well heeled refugees from the big cities pursuing an alternative lifestyle.
Monty's best buddy Tim's dog Monty (yes I know it's confusing, it doesn't help that they are the same breed and colour and have identical habits) came too and they had a brilliant time on Grassy Head beach. So did we as a pod of dolphins pottered along really close to the edge allowing some surfers to paddle out amongst them, then Virginia spotted a whale blow in the distance and we were able to watch several of them frolicking around out to sea.
On our return home we found a flower show was to be held at the weekend. We do not hold out too much hope for these things in a small community like ours but felt we should go along and support it. The standard was pretty good with some very creative entries but I still love to see the flowers and plants which are completely unfamiliar to European eyes like the waratahs and proteas, I have tried to grow these and killed a couple so far but I now have one that seems to be hanging on to life by the skin of of its teeth so I am keeping my fingers crossed.
There were also all kinds of orchids, which again I am only used to seeing indoors so I have been inspired to plant a couple outside, everyone says they are easy.....we will have to see!
Winter is now definitely over, the weather seems to switch very suddenly into spring on September 1st and the shorts and t-shirts come back out for another nine months. Australia is unique in my experience in that even on the coldest days (admittedly only about 15C) when we are wearing our warmest coats, there is always someone wandering around wearing a vest (or singlet), shorts and flip flops (or thongs) even sometimes barefoot!
So with the weather renewing our enthusiasm for the outdoor life we decided to head back to Wollombi where we had spotted the free camping when we went there with Robin, our visitor from London.
Free camping is much more popular here than in England for a number of reasons, among them are space available and being able to keep warm without power. We had noticed a couple of people camping behind the pub in Wollombi and, upon asking, found that the toilets are left open 24 hours in return for the campers spending a bit of money in the bar, we thought we could manage that so off we set.
Wollombi is in the Hunter Valley and only about a 90 minute drive from us, we arrived to find we had the place to ourselves and set up our caravan beside the creek. It was wonderful and we realised we had been wasting quite a bit of money on campsites in the past, they are never much less than $30 a night and we have a pretty comprehensive solar set up on the van and gas cooking equipment so did not miss much at all. The only issue is lack of showers but we have a camping shower so can make do when the weather is warm but that is more of an issue if it is colder.
The little historic town was delightful again. Apart from being a staging post on the convict built road from Sydney to the Hunter, it is the home of Dr. Jurd's Jungle Juice, a drink originally made from the dregs of wine barrels and said to have medicinal properties but now it is commercially produced in its own right and bears a resemblance to port.
It is also a bit of a cosmic place, many of the properties have been bought by city dwellers who have decided to get themselves a few acres and just sit and paint or whittle or whatever. There are a couple of art galleries and we made the mistake of going into one which was manned by a group of women in woolly hats. The artwork was an entire room with birds made of wool hanging from the ceiling and branches distributed around with dreamcatchers in them. Once in it was tricky to get out without being noticed and one of the women started to tell us how this was their offering to Mother Earth as Mother Earth is all around us blah di blah.... luckily another bunch of unsuspecting tourists wandered in and we made a quick getaway.
Joking aside, the cosmic element is a lot of fun and many of the old buildings have been restored using recycled materials thereby maintaining an appropriate appearance for their age.
We were in a great spot for visiting the Hunter Valley, which is a funny place really, one minute the countryside is all beautiful valleys and wineries, the next minute you are among some of the largest open cut coalmines in the world. The motto on the sign at the entrance to Cessnock, a town right in the heart of the Hunter is 'Cessnock - Wines, Mines and People'. All this added to splendid wildlife, a Blue Tongued Lizard joined us for coffee and we saw plenty of birds we do not get on the coast like this charming little Double Barred Finch..
Our visitors are all safely back in England now after their adventures Down Under. In the wake of our epic driving trip out west, we were not feeling much like travelling anywhere so were delighted to discover some excitement was on its way to us. The FIM Asia Supermoto Championship was coming to Newcastle and would be free to the public!
We decided to go on the Saturday to watch practice and qualifying and set off on a rather windy morning to catch the ferry across the mouth of the Hunter River to the city centre.
The foreshore park had been dug up to form the dirt part of the circuit with jumps and troughs ( I haven't heard anyone complaining) after this the riders would emerge out onto the road and race along the foreshore and back.
When we arrived we were rather dismayed to find the track was still being built so, after a look around at the bikes in their tyre blankets and the usual stands selling motorbike related stuff, we settled ourselves on the hill with a good view from above and waited.....and waited.
An hour after the advertised start time a series of Norman Collier style announcements rang out which nobody could understand and the organisers were beginning to be in danger of losing their audience who were starting to give up their vantage points and gather around the burger vans in a disgruntled fashion. However, when the bikes finally burst onto the scene everyone forgot their moans and took up their places again to watch, what turned out to be, a fantastic day of racing.
It was pretty exciting watching the dirt part of the circuit (I am sure there is a proper name for this) but even better when we ventured down trackside on the road. Because it was practice day and not race day it was easy to get right by the railings and be in amongst the action.
There was a particularly entertaining viewing area where the bikes first emerged from the dirt with muddy tyres onto the road and almost every third rider fell off at the first bend.
The foreshore made a marvellous backdrop to the whole event which was such a success it is now going to be an annual leg of the Asian Championships. To cap it all, the race
on Sunday was won by a local lad from Salamander Bay.
After a crack of dawn start to spot kangaroos we decided over breakfast to move on to our next destination a day earlier than planned as it had become clear that Archie was very interested in rocks and the next stop was the opal mining town of Lightning Ridge, so named because a farmer and his sheep were all killed by a lightning strike there many moons ago.
We drove back through Bourke and stopped for a quick squint at the Darling River. Ian said the rivers in this part of Australia run upside down with their mud on the top and he wasn't kidding, it was completely brown!
The boys were very impressed with the technology at one of the roadside toilets where, for night time use, drivers have to shine their headlights on a specified spot to reflect and light up the toilets! We pressed on for another couple of hours until we came to Grawin, along a dirt road just outside Lightning Ridge where we had heard there was free camping at the Club in the Scrub.
The club was a splendid collection of ramshackle buildings huddled together with an area for camping at the back. The owners leave the, surprisingly smart, toilets open all the time for any campers to use and were incredibly friendly, as were the customers. The club itself boasts a golf course. There is no grass, just red dirt with flags sticking out of holes every so often, when we asked the owner if it was an 18 hole course she said, "Yes, they just have to go round it twice!"
There were posters on display for the upcoming Grawin show which featured fun events like Catch the Greasy Pig and Have Your Picture Taken With Figjam and his Teeth!
While setting up camp Archie got tangled up with a very spiteful cactus but not nearly as caught up as Eddie managed to get trying to release him. Once Eddie was finally freed we went for something to eat in the pub. The only people around these parts are opal miners, most of whom have very small scale operations, a prospective miner will buy a claim, erect a shack on it, dig a hole and start trying to find his or her fortune.
The food in the club was good and the customers were all keen to give Archie advice on specking (or noodling) for opals himself. The general public are permitted to rummage around in the huge tip of waste rock the miners dump when they have finished with it and sometimes people make worthwhile discoveries. We were told to look for a blue or black line in the rock called potch which is the substance the opals form in, then to break the rock open and see if there is anything inside.
Armed with this information we headed off into Lightning Ridge in the morning for a look around, passing Stanley the emu a very impressive Big Thing made of metal and scrap VW Beetles. When we arrived we found there was far too much to fit in to one trip. There are mines open to the public, museums, shops, tours, markets and countless other attractions including The Big Opal (without doubt the most disappointing Big Thing to date) so we limited ourselves to the market where Archie bought himself some opals, a museum and a driving tour of part of the mining area.
There is a huge open cut mine owned by a big business but it is surrounded by hundreds of little claims where individuals are scrabbling around hoping to get rich, the whole area is pockmarked with holes only big enough for one person to climb down fenced off with very rickety bits of fence - a landscape you would not want to wander around in the dark. The town is also dotted with old cement mixers which are used to clean the dirt and bits of rock off the opals, they are the symbol of the town as you can see in the first picture.
We drove back to Grawin and stopped off in another pub, the Sheepyard Inn (this tiny area has three pubs all made up of old bits of scrap metal and this one had a railway carriage as a kitchen). The Sheepyard Inn was the centre of a small huddle of shacks and sheds occupied by speculators, it was quite a cosmic little community and a lot of fun I could see why people might choose this alternative lifestyle if city life became too much or a relationship fell apart.
It was time for us to do some fossicking ourselves so we went to the rock dump and set to. We found a few little bits and Eddie got himself a very promising looking bit of rock with a big blue line all the way through the middle, it turned out only to be potch but it was very exciting all the same.
We planned an early start as we had a long drive home the next day. As we settled in our tents it started to rain which is a real problem when the only access is a dirt road, not only does it become too slippery to drive on, the locals will not let you because you can mess the road up for them with ruts which will not go away for months. At about 5am it was really raining rather heavily so Ian woke us all up and we threw everything into the car and hightailed it out of there while we still could all soaking wet and still wearing what we had slept in. We finally got home in the mid afternoon after a 2300km round trip adventure.
Almost as soon as we waved our first guest, Robin, off on the train down to Sydney to continue his adventure, I was back at Broadmeadow Station to pick up Ed and Archie.
Ian was working at the Habitat then meeting us once we got home but as soon as we arrived in Lemon Tree Passage my phone rang and it was Ian telling me to bring them straight to the Habitat as there was a koala but he was very active and could move on at any time, so we turned around and high tailed it down there.
The koala was a big male and very low down the tree, he obviously thought the mating season had started as he had been going from tree to tree marking them with the scent gland on his chest with Ian in hot pursuit so he did not lose him before Archie arrived.
After taking plenty of pictures of him we wandered around the Habitat and found a female high in the branches, if you look carefully you can see her in the photo with Eddie and Archie. It was a very successful day in the koala department because, as well as these two, Ella was in her usual tree down near the marina, a three koala day is very special.
The weather was glorious and the following day we took the boys to see various beaches around the bay where they swam and played in the sand. Eddie came out with the quote of the trip when he said, "Do you come down to this beach in winter?" To which I replied, "this is winter."
We wanted to give our visitors a taste of as many different bits of Australia as we could in the limited time available, they had already been to Sydney for a couple of days and were heading up to the Great Barrier reef after leaving us so we had booked a trip to the outback.
It was going to be a 2300 km round trip so it made sense to get up at 4am for the first part of the journey - 12 hours to Gundabooka National Park, still in New South Wales, back of Bourke (to an Australian, going back o'Bourke means officially entering the outback). All three of us adults drove in turn so we were able to press on with no lengthy stops, although we did briefly stop in Walgett which is a very grim little town with grilles up at all the shop windows. We decided we wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible and it turned out we were right as we heard on the return journey that someone was murdered there that very night!
As we neared Bourke I prepared myself for big things as all the road signs and maps made out Bourke to be huge but it turned out just to be big compared with the other towns around it and was a bit of a disappointment, however, it is the gateway to the outback so significant in that respect. We arrived at our destination at around 4pm. It was beautiful, all dark red earth and beating sun just as you would imagine. We had booked to stay in the shearers accomodation, which consisted of 6 bedrooms each with two bunks, a communal kitchen and eating area then outside toilets and showers (redback spider heaven). There was a fire pit outside which was great as it gets pretty cool at night and it is unusual to be allowed to light a fire in the scrub so Archo (his new outback name) gathered sticks and we ate dinner around the camp fire before retiring pretty tired.
The next morning we went exploring and found the old sheep shearing shed which was surprisingly intact with much of the equipment still in place. The shearers names were written on the walls with the number of sheep they had sheared beside them, it was quite easy to imagine the heat, smells and noise of a working shearing shed as we soaked up the atmosphere. We followed this with a walk along a track through the bush and were surprised by the carpet of beautiful spring flowers under the trees as far as the eye could see, it was like an English meadow, they must have had a reasonable amount of rain recently because it is usually just red dirt.
There was another walk marked on the map which led to Aboriginal rock art in the caves at the end, so we followed a path among huge rocks and boulders and spotted a kangaroo grazing nearby. We looked around to point him out and realised we had lost Eddie, we could hear him yodelling in the distance so Ian and Archie stayed with the kangaroo while I went to find him. Once Eddie was retrieved we finished the walk and drove back to our shearers quarters, it was around 5pm by now which is the best time to spot kangaroos as they are diurnal animals. We saw heaps, big reds, medium greys and wallabies but the highlight was seeing an emu with four stripey babies.
After a dinner of Ian and Archie's famous Archoburgers we had an early night with a plan in place to get up at sunrise to go and spot more kangaroos.
