Mid North coast of NSW

I hope that the title of my blog today is in fact correct. My geographical knowledge of New South Wales is not what it could be, that is, it could be a lot better. Mind you, it is getting better every day and from here, we will explore the North coast and Northern Rivers, so there!!
 Been nice here at Forster. We knew it would be, after all of the people we have spoken to over the years who had been before us. Intriguing community here as well. We have the usual shopping strip over the way with several coffee places, a plethora of hairdressers that accommodates both men and women.A large shopping centre has opened about a kilometre away from the traditional centre and as usual, the strip has suffered. Stockland seems to be expanding fairly quickly if Queensland is an indicator, and so, the demise of several different businesses from the strip is the price these people have paid. Vacant shops of various sizes makes you wonder if anyone is game enough to attempt to have a go here. Time will tell.
Exploring has been good as well. We had been told how good seal rocks was. A trip of about 30klms south and we were there. Another beautiful beach, a community that seems to be based on fishing, with small boats and nets in abundance. First time we have seen a warning sign about "hauling cable across road"....Seal rocks leads to the Sugarloaf lighthouse, now a b&b. The walk to the light was worth every step. The walk from the buildings to the light itself, a steep gradient, was 160 steps and tiring in the short term but the view was exceptional. Taking in about 270 degrees covering the lighthouse beach, cliffs, blowhole and all the way around to seal rocks, spectacular. Caretaker, Terry, suggested we might like to take a look at one of the restored light keepers cottages, and we did, lovely. Terry had also mentioned that several whales had been seen offshore and can be seen, with patience. We chilled for a while staring out to sea ever hopeful of seeing the leap, the splash or the spout and there it was, a splash, and then another. So we knew that we weren't seeing things. A quick look for confirmation through the binoculars and all was ok. The walk, the steps, the splash, all worth it.
We returned via Bulahdelah and Nabiac just in time to get inside as the sun had set and the breeze was  up.
Yesterday we had a look around the other part of the area, seperated by a bridge. The Western town is Tuncurry and has a good business area and a nice new Woolworths which suited our shopping needs. Fishermens co-operative are worth supporting , like village butchers and bakers, and the Tuncurry co-op was no exception. Fresh,local fish, reasonably priced, local prawns and oysters, they've got the lot. On our departure we were met by a rather large pelican, looking for a feed. I spent a couple of hours attempting to catch anything longer than about 5" but to no avail.
Today we had a bit more of an explore locally. We left the van on foot and walked to the shopping strip. The usual Op shops are always great and finding the local post office, we picked up our mail that had been forwarded on. A couple of more hours fishing, or feeding the tiddlers was nice.Tomorrow we move on towards Port Macquarie .

Passing traffic

Some pretty big ships come in here. As youcan see, the weather not exactly brilliant here at the moment.
This ship, the Formosabulk Clement weighs in at 170,000 tonnes and measures 289mtrs X 45mtrs... I told you they were big.

Old and the new

At Stockton today we found some rusting old hulks that were exposed by the low tide. These sorrowful looking remains were in close proximity to some new vessels and some oyster leases. they could be the remains of service vessels for the oyster leases. beside them on  the shore, was the remains of an old slip way, including this hand winch, some rusting railway lines that went back into the water and this lovely stone wall....The winch area capped off by an abandoned plastic chair.

Every Picture tells a Story

Gulgong the town on the $10- note

Gulgong used to be on the old paper $10- note along with a profile of Henry Lawson. Lawsons mum  was born there and Henry was born in Grenfell, but spent a great deal of his childhood in and around this lovely town of historic 1850's buildings and the narrow streets to match.

"The night too quickly passes
and we are growing old.
So let us raise our glasses
And toast the days of gold."
So starts one of my favourite Lawson poems. Can you guess the title?

We press on to nearby Mudgee for a few days. the plan at this stage is to use Mudgee as a base and go out each day and explore the old gold areas around here. This has been on our "To Do List" for a number of years. A Ross Dainton painting that we still have, was titled "Hill End" and that is the first stop out of the Hill End /Sofala historic sites area. Glorious day today with temps about 25C on our arrival, we dropped the van at the caravan park on the river and moved straight into town. Info had it there was a market on run by the local Lions club. Off we go, before lunch and the market was quite good with about 50-60 stalls. I got sucked in by a woman selling her own lemon butter and a passionfruit butter YUMMO....

Hay, Hillston and the Rabbit Trap Hotel

After a short stay in Bendigo, yeah, that's right, bendigo. We had been up the central coast of new south wales just after Easter when i had to head back for a check up in Bendigo. Well, after getting the all-clear, I couldn't wait to get going again. We caught up with the kids and headed up the Cobb highway hoping that the MYSTERY town of Hay would hold the appeal that it has had for us for several years. We have wanted to explore more of this old, riverina town with classic architecture since visiting on one of our "paddlesteamer wreck finding tours" of years ago. That was when we found the wreck of the PS Viola downstream of Hay, went on then to Maude, the junction of two great rivers, Lachlan and Murrumbidgee. Anyway, Hay had been labelled as the NEW inland capital of Australia, before Walter Burley Griffin developed his theory as Canberras site. Why? Simply, Hay is equidistant between Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide..Q.E.D....
This explains why the main lenders of the day, The Bank of New South Wales (Westpac), The Great Union Bank, later English Scottish and Australian Bank and even later ANZ Banking group, The Hay council and the magnificent Hay Railway station, are such splendid if not grandiose buildings.

After exploring Hay, firstly from the Hay showgrounds, which is a cheap but convenient overnighter, and secondly from the hay caravan Park (The Top Tourist park) we found that Hay had not developed to our previous expectations but still does a great job for the surrounding community with all services well covered.

Hillston was our next goal and we had been told at the Hay showgrounds of a small caravan park over the lachlan river and just past the Lake Cargelligo intersection. This place, Billabourie, was a family farm set up with a few powered sites. Off we go...

10 kilometres of gravel road off the main road and we see the park logo, a Hart-Parr tractor(vintage) hitched up to a nice old plywood caravan at the front gate meant that we had found the right place.The drive in had seen several different things from this low lying river type landscape. we have seen this country before from the family farm at Balranald where the cattle seemed to grow fat on nothing much down by the river amongst the trees. This time, Black Angus and a few herefords were seen on the way and then a field of harvested cotton bales waiting to be loaded and taken off to the gin at Hillston or somewhere else North. We had already come past paddocks where sowing of grain was happening even so by dry sowing. Crops of citrus trees and neils trucks from Moama laden with potatoes..

Three nights was not enough here. Jeff and Steph, from Adelaide had left us although Robert and Janet and Barry and Trish, all from Ballarat were staying on until after we left they kept up the wood supply and Barry caught good Yellas every session he went out. My score was not as good with one, but it was a beauty.

We have changed our tack again, now, instead of heading North into Queensland, we have the time to go back, across to the coast and complete our original goal of doing the East coast. Heading back over the Lachlan we follow it for ages. Lake Cargelligo, Condobolin and beyond before it swings back towards Orange/Cowra and the hills of the Great Dividing range. Camps 7 has the Rabbit Trap Hotel as a cheap site with power and water so that's our next destination. The hotel is at a small place called Albert, population 11, made famous this year by Jason Owen, runner up in X factor last season.

There is a car rally due in town today so we decide to head off and get outta their way. Heading up through Narromine, Dubbo and on to Dunnedo we have time to walk the 600 mtrs up the main street for a look and say g'day to a few surprised locals. I have felt a lot more comfortable the last few days because I'm back in HAT country and people don't stare at me when entering shops or anywhere at the moment..

The Long Paddock

We have been wanting to do this for a while. The Long Paddock is a section of New South Wales that has a great deal of history associated with it and this time it's because of the droving industry.The long paddock comes from times when there was no feed at home for the graziers to feed their stock so, they hit the road, or the long paddock. In this part of New South Wales, it was part of the National stock route which, basically lead from the Gulf of Carpentaria, to the Southern Port of Melbourne.Take notice when you drive out of Moama, heading North and see where the fence boundaries are, you will see they are up to a kilometre apart on either side of the cobb highway. Founder of Echuca, Henry Hopwood, had a boiling down works on the river bank, just out of Moama, at about where  merool caravan park is today and that is the southern  end of the Long paddock. Hopwoods works, abattoir, took advantage of the herds coming through that would normally be swum across the river, to the point of him building a punt that would ferry them across, and, at a price of course.The place where Hopwood chose for his ferry site was downstream of where a fellow Tasmanian convict, James Maiden, had the earliest punt at about the front gate of Maidens Inn caravan park today. Enterprising chap, Hopwood. His punt location meant TWO river crossings, Murray and Campaspe and he charged to cross BOTH.
The Long Paddock leads to the Kidman Way, another famous Australian grazing name, You may recognize that as belonging to Nicole, but Sidney Kidman was her ancestor and he marched his cattle from the Gulf through Queensland and New South Wales to Victoria. Sir Sidney was once the owner of Murray Downs station at Swan Hill. Kidman was known as the Cattle King and there is a book of that name worth reading.
Our visit last year to Camooweal and the tourist attraction there, "The Drovers Camp" was a real eye opener. The research about this industry and the effect and importance

it had on the country is fascinating and so it is worthwhile visiting that complex if in the area.