At journey’s end

First posted on January 9, 2013

This little road trip wouldn’t have happened without Joseph’s off-the-cuff invitation to his family party when I couldn’t make his 'friends' party in Brisbane. And it wouldn’t have been the same had Alison & James not shown me such hospitality in Canberra. The kindness of strangers along the way lifted the spirits of this solo traveller. Thank you to dear friends and to angel strangers.

I set out with no plan other than to see some country NSW towns. I wondered at the wisdom of it – being both hot and holidays, when so many places would likely be closed. Yes, the heat was tiring at times, but not paralysingly so. That places were closed turned out not to matter. Seeing all the old buildings, not-ripped-down rather than preserved probably, was a beautiful sight. Pressed metal ceilings too, to shop verandahs and hotel doorways. Going inside any of them wouldn’t have improved on that – they would have been gutted and made over for modern day usage, or else they would have been empty and dusty, no longer in use at all. That Canowindra had been used as a film location caught my eye, but any one of the smaller towns could be similarly used.

I was amazed at how much new housing was being built in a number of places, both small towns and the outskirts of Canberra, which is changing rapidly. In just about all of these I was struck by the craziness of their design. No eaves, no verandahs. The wide eaves and extensive verandahs on the old homes are not only beautiful but practical. The new places have the harsh sun beating down on them without protection. You don’t notice it quite so much in suburbia but a farmhouse in the middle of a paddock … they’re building themselves ovens, not homes.

There was water in dams and rivers. Evidence of broken drought? Or a superficial gloss on a still present threat. Similarly, the towns looked mostly comfortable, if not prosperous. But does the town recovery mask still existent pain on the land? Doing a drive through as I did, even at a slower pace than those passing through quickly on their way to Sydney or beyond, you really can’t tell, only hope.

But after 2,485.6km door-to-door, can I draw a line under this trip just yet? At the Melbourne side of Kilmore, I changed lanes and accelerated to both pass a slow moving vehicle towing a boat as it exited the services and also to get a bit of oomph to go up the approaching hill. Damn! Round the slight curve I’m now doing close to 120 instead of 110 – a camera! So beautifully placed to raise a heap of revenue in that scenario that must be played out so many times each day. Waiting now to see if a certain envelope lands in my letter box. Oh well, can’t fight it if it does. And it won’t blot out the great experience that I’ve just had.

Deo gratias

Next? Well, arrived from Book Depository today … the Trailblazer Trans-Siberian guide! I love trains but think this one really is a fantasy!

................................

Later notes:
- Escaped a speeding ticket ... whew!
- Seriously considered the trans-Siberian railway but ... much as I'd have loved to do it, not as good value for money as all I managed to do and see on my Last Hurrah overseas holiday before I retired in 2014.

Chiltern

First posted on January 8, 2013

Not quite such a leisurely start on Sunday morning. Alison had work to do on her PhD thesis and I had to start heading for home. But first, brunch in Kingston followed by a visit to the Canberra glassworks, housed in a former powerhouse. The glassworks is by a Sunday market and I thought I spotted it. No, the market is still on its Christmas/New Year break. That crowd was the Epiphany procession from the nearby Orthodox church!

Old Canberra powerhouse, now home to glassworks

As if it wasn’t hot enough already! (At times on this trip you could feel the car tyres sticking to the tarmac!!) It was fascinating, watching a blob turn into a delicate bowl, so we kept on watching, getting more sweat-drenched by the minute. I was anyway! It’s one of those painstaking crafts that I wouldn’t have the patience to do but love the end result.

You can do classes there and make simple things without blowing. I wouldn’t mind trying to make a paperweight! No need to explain the whatever weird shape it turned out. It would be ‘right’ …. artistic even. Ha ha!

Having bade good-bye to Joseph the previous evening, now it was time to say good-bye to Alison when I dropped her back home. Until next time, of course! I prefer to fill the tank at the start of a day’s driving so pulled into the queue at Yass services. And what a queue! After sitting for a while I decided to rearrange the bits and pieces in the car. Then I sat for a while longer. Finally, I pulled out of the queue and joined the Hume. Goodness knows where all the vehicles had come from, with all their various towed jet-skis, surf-boards, cars!, and goodness knows what hidden under tarps. There was no queue at all at Jugiong. Probably not as many people as I did paid 159.9/litre! It was only 130.9/litre at Holbrook, where I stopped for a late afternoon tea. Early afternoon tea had been at Gundagai – the town, not by the Dog on the Tuckerbox!

I hadn’t intended pulling into Jugiong – memories of doing that with my dear, much missed (deceased last year) friend Brenda a few years ago, laughing at the funny name of the place. But it was the first petrol point after Yass. On the way out of that tiny hamlet I stopped at the lookout point – beautiful countryside.

Views over Jugiong

Apart from the breaks at Gundagai and Holbrook, it was straight through to Chiltern, a hot day’s driving, thankful I wasn’t driving straight home. Tea at a local pub – I think the first ‘home made’ quiche I’ve had that has been home made! Delicious, with lovely flaky pastry. Followed by an early night, or so I thought!

For the past few days there had been a lot of little insects about, liberally sprinkled on the car whenever I stopped. I arrived in Canberra with a streaming nose, a ‘mind over matter’ result from thinking an insect went up my nose the previous night in Cowra. No – whatever it was, it was ‘just a tickle’. 
I experienced the real thing in Chiltern – an insect in my ear! I could hear and feel it flapping about. Jumping under the shower at 1.15am to flush it out wasn’t the sort of sleep I’d been hoping for! Nor when you could feel the insects on your skin. After the ear episode I pulled the sheet over me almost like a shroud.

In the morning outside the motel room door ….

Canberra 2

First posted on January 8, 2013

After sleeping like a log it was a leisurely start to Saturday when Alison and I headed to the National Gallery to see the Toulouse-Lautrec exhibition.

We got our tickets and had breakfast before seeing the paintings and posters. T-L isn’t top of my pops but I do find his work interesting. My memory of it is probably very poor but this exhibition seemed to have more paintings, fewer posters than in the T-L exhibition I saw in Melbourne “a few” years ago. When I checked, those “few” years were more like 18-20!
This is my favourite painting from the collection, which was assembled from across the globe, not from one or two galleries as is often the case. Photo snaffled from the internet as, naturally, no photography allowed in the NGA.

Jane Avril - Henri de TOULOUSE-LAUTREC, 1899

Alison was heading off to the sale at the running shop with James (too energetic by far!) and I planned to look at the Portrait Gallery but when I saw the time it was later than I thought. After a quick dash through the Impressionists at NGA I headed to the National Library where, as mentioned in the previous post, I wrote and uploaded that post.

National Library of Australia

NLA forecourt

Beautiful windows in the NLA cafe

It was a straightforward drive back ‘home’ to wrap Joseph’s present and change for his 50th birthday party. Getting there, I saw a little bit more of Canberra than I’d intended :-/ When Joseph said it was a family party, he was right. There were only three of us who weren’t family, the other two being a ringer I’d known years ago and his partner, so it was good to catch up with them. Best of all to catch up with Joseph. We first met going on thirty years ago. Hard to believe! His family, a few of whom I’ve met in the past, is lovely and made me most welcome. It was good to see Ted, his dad, again but sadly his mum died a few years ago.

I was starving by this stage, having missed lunch. The party food was lots a cold meat and salads with a few warm dishes on the side. It was all set up in the garage which was just as well. As we were about to eat there was a massive downpour with lots of thunder and some spectacular lightning. 

Not a great photo but you do get the "lit by lightning" effect

The temperature dropped and it became a very pleasant evening to be outdoors … apart from the mozzie bites! The rain stopped and it was time for the birthday cake (or cakes since it was an assembly of cup-cakes …. patty cakes back in my day!!). The “girls” (three of Joseph’s nieces who did that bit of organizing) were just about to set it up outside when the heavens opened again! They know how he loves his grey pussy-cat!

Happy 50th, Joseph!

It was fun, all gathered under the carport this time, to sing happy birthday, followed by eating cake and pav and fruit salad. Yum. Going home, again I saw a bit more of Canberra by night than I’d planned. Ho hum! But very pretty

Canberra 1

First posted on January 5, 2013

A low-key day, this one, and all the driving was easy. I found a servo to re-fill the car then went back into town for the sole reason of departing Corowa via the old plank bridge!

First stop was at the outskirts of Grenfell where the remnants of a mine still exist, the main ones being two mine shafts. It’s old gold mining territory. You would have to be insane to go down there. No wonder the miners’ wives didn’t like what their husbands did.

In the town itself, breakfast – always the must do first thing at the first new town each day. From the advertising in the tourist brochures and the look of the place, “The Loaded Dog” would not be out of place in Brunswick, Clifton Hill and the like. I looked in the window and there were quite a few people there so I headed over to the bakery. It looked too old-fashioned and the craft things in the window made me wonder how serious a bakery it was, so I went back to the Loaded Dog. On going inside I was hit by a blast of noise… all the customers were talking – loudly! So back to the bakery where they produced yet another lovely fresh salad sandwich. To start with I was alone but then some older (older than me!) locals arrived. I could hear their conversation too but it was no cacophony and the content was fascinating, not that I caught it all.

– It would be 109 (deg) and you wouldn’t think twice about going shearing
– These (?town) people don’t know to wet your hat before putting it on your head too cool you down
– It was a dry heat, you could still do anything
– I wouldn’t want to be shearing now, with the way the heat has changed

That last comment interested me most of all. With so much about climate change, the scientists and the sceptics, I wonder if anyone has talked to the people on the land?

Still on the lookout for a bag for book-group, I called into the Grenfell craft shop, in a bendy main street as in Canowindra, but on a bigger scale.

The woman there didn’t have what I wanted, we talked about this’n’that, I told her about the craft shop in Temora where I went on a similar quest but came away with my coloured necklace and earrings. She knew the place exactly. She said she’d done a workshop there and came home with jewellery too!

Leaving Grenfell, on the outskirts of that side of town there was an arrow to Henry Lawson’s birthplace. Well, why not. I turned left and almost entered a farm that definitely wasn’t right. No, the “birthplace” is an obelisk marking the vaguely “round about here” location. It looked more like a death-type monument and not a comfortable shape to remind you of birth!!

Next stop Young. For once, the convenience of the info centre being on the side of town I entered by. This one was in the old railway station buildings. It housed paintings by local artists – priced considerably higher than those in Forbes. Not as good either so no temptation to buy on either count.

Young, NSW - tourist info centre in the old railway station

What I was interested in buying was fudge! I love it and already had picked up a leaflet about the local specialty shop where fudge is made on the premises. I asked the girl (about 20, max!) where it was: just up the street. She asked where I was from, as they do for their records. When I said from Melbourne she was really impressed! Personally, I think it’s a great place to live, but I’m not so sure about it being a fabulous tourist destination.

In the town proper, once again streets with beautiful street plantings at corners and roundabouts.

It wasn’t all that long since my breakfast sandwich so wasn’t all that hungry. But when I saw a really big bakery with signs it had been voted the best in NSW or some such, I had to go in. Their offerings were pretty extensive but I settled on fruit salad, the first I’d seen anywhere. It was so refreshing in the heat of the day. Not as many preserved building facades here but one is of note: the Town Hall Building with tower and memorial. It reminded me very much of the ferry building in San Francisco, a miniature version thereof. (And will probably be very different when I get to look at my SF photos again!!)

Finally, on to my real destination, Canberra. On one map I’d seen a glass place noted in Harden. An older woman at the Young TIC said No, at the next town. I drove through both without anything jumping out at me but didn’t stop the car, figuring I was meant to save money! I did however stop at the entrance to Harden. From some distance off as you approached, you could see an impressive looking church on the skyline.

Catholic Church, Harden, NSW

Recently, friend John from Brisbane commented in an email: I have three ‘rules’ about visiting somewhere new – use public transport, go to the local church, and do some walking. Well, there are taxis in a few of the places I’ve been! And I’ve done a bit of walking where I absolutely had to get out of the car into the heat. But the churches, and there have been quite a few – closed, locked, well and truly – apart from Sunday services …. and in many, most, towns these only happen on a rotating basis. I did go to Mass in Culcairn. So it was a real surprise to see an open door at this church at Harden – had to go in. Without being spectacular, it was a lovely old country church that had been re-ordered but not vandalistically for post-Vatican II liturgy. No one else was there: a precious few moments of quiet contemplation.

Very last stop – Yass. A coffee while I studied the map and committed to memory directions to Alison’s place. Happy memories of spending time with Joseph and his family in Yass itself and out at the family farm, where I’ve stayed on a few occasions, a while ago now. On the approach to Yass, in the distance I saw a Melbourne-Sydney train snaking through the countryside, just about where it passes the farm. Happy memories too of travelling to the farm by train. Love trains!

I got to Alison’s in Canberra about 20 minutes after my guessed arrival time of 5pm. So good to be with friends again, eat a delicious home-cooked meal again, relax in a lounge-room before going to bed for a long sound sleep!

And the novelty and pleasure of writing this at the National Library in Canberra! Not to mention the bliss of a fast upload speed for adding photos to the blog. Heaven!!!!

Something unexpected for the new year

First posted on December 01, 2012

Lo and behold …..!!! My ‘young’ friend Joseph turns 50 on 6th January. When I told him that unfortunately I couldn’t go to his ‘party’ party in Brisbane on 19th January he replied, “Why not come to the family party on 5th January in Canberra then?” Yay – it works for me!! I can drive up.

But then I got to thinking …. and it might not be the most sensible thought but then again, the weather might be kind – I’m taking the long route to get there. Hoping for the mid-30s average all along the way, not the mid-40s possibilities. My plan is to drive relatively short distances each day, carry plenty of water (and a bit of food!), not go off main/sealed roads – it should be do-able. Most places I’ve booked to stay have a pool so cooling down will be mostly easy. Only a couple say they have internet/wi-fi so we’ll have to see how blogging goes.

Roughly the area I’ll be travelling in before cutting across to Canberra – but not going as far east as Bathurst