Culcairn

First posted on December 29, 2012

by margcal

Here we go again, all the better for it being quite unexpected and much less planning than usual. Mind you, luckily there was some planning and booking – I arrived at the only motel in Culcairn to see a ‘No Vacancy’ sign out the front. But prior to that …..

The night before departure friends Jenny & John fed me a nutritious and delicious dinner, setting me up well for my little road trip. Significantly marred by our taking leave of each other as John headed for an emergency doctor’s appointment. Unfortunately his self-diagnosis proved correct: shingles. Poor thing.

I aimed to leave by 9.00am with the hope of being away by 10. Finally hit the road at 10.30 and drove 310km for the day. Being the Saturday between Christmas and New Year there was plenty of traffic about until turning off the Hume Freeway to the Olympic Highway, not far short of my destination. But it all moved along smoothly.

I was planning on lunch at Wangaratta but my tummy was telling me otherwise so I turned off the Hume at Benalla. Salad sandwich (no onion), mince tart and coffee did the trick. Then the search for a loo. Found at the tourist info centre. The centre is at the edge of a lake looking across to an art gallery that looks well worth a visit, as do the botanical gardens behind the gallery that I’d passed on the way into this rural city. But that’s for another time. However, the tourist info centre was much more than a loo stop. It’s also home to the museum of the local historical society. There’s a Ned Kelly exhibition with some significant memorabilia. But what delighted me were two clothing exhibitions: wedding gowns from about 1850 to 1980 and race-wear (Melbourne Cup and the like) covering a similar period. An unexpected pleasure, the wedding gowns being every bit as good a display as that which I saw at Bendigo gallery a couple of years ago. Outside the TIC was a sculpture affair that looked quite faux Gaudi, not that I’ve been to Barcelona.

Benalla Art Gallery

Gaudi-esque

I rejoined the Hume and went straight through to Culcairn, by-passing Albury-Wodonga.

En route to Culcairn

Small country town pretty much sums it up. A quick drive through (even at 50km/hr) and you’ve seen it. Not much more than I’ve seen from the train 20-30 years ago! I stopped by the info board to work out where the motel was. 500m away. And would you believe it, I got breathalyzed! Welcome to town!!!  I got settled into the better than average motel then went for a walk around town.

Trains still operate through Culcairn

I called into the pub to check what time they did dinner. Enough to make me hope there was somewhere else but there was one admirable feature – fabulous windows. I’m a sucker for beautiful glass.

The town has a lovely looking swimming pool complex but nothing that I could find by way of a park to relax in. So it was back to the motel to read (the creepy Sharp Objects by Gillian Flynn) for a while before Mass at the ‘modern’ (built very shortly after Vatican II at a guess) St Patrick’s church, followed by pizza for tea.

And so ended Day One. It’s the longest time I’ll have driving in one day so the rest should be pretty relaxed really. Perhaps no bad thing that I won’t be racing around like a headless chook. Especially as it’s warm and will get warmer!

I wonder if I’ll hear trains during the night? …. Yessss

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

Reflection

On board - I'd do it all again in a flash!
See the group photo here
See a random selection of photos here

I've been lucky enough to make several trips to the UK and Europe, a stunning visit to Tunisia in North Africa, and last year I had a fantastic eight weeks in the US and Canada. Finally, I get to see a bit of my own country – and it has to be the most amazing thing I've ever done.


At the WA border

I loved everything about it – with the exception of the mosquitoes I do admit. I loved the remoteness; the views to the horizon that was many, many miles away; the beauty of water in dry, dry land; the red rocks and earth; the quaintness of remote shops, like general stores of 50+ years ago; did I say the remoteness?; the blue sea; the wide open sky; the light of the full moon and the brightness of so many stars when sleeping in the open, and so much more.

However, the final word after this amazing trip can go to someone who says it so much better than I can, Dorothea Mackellar .....


My Country

The love of field and coppice,
Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror -
The wide brown land for me!

A stark white ring-barked forest
All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Core of my heart, my country!
Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die -
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.

Core of my heart, my country!
Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold -
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land -
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand -
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Jedda Rock, Katherine River Gorge

Whose problem??

I arrived home on the day that the Alice Springs Coroner released his findings on yet another Aboriginal death in police custody. The police involved were castigated on a number of accounts but all remain serving officers. Their shortcomings were not criminal offences apparently. But what of moral shortcomings? The law has nothing to say there.

And now, early in the week that I'm finally finishing writing about this trip, the front page of The Age was full of a report of the catastrophic effects of alcohol on the Aboriginal population around Fitzroy Crossing, ranging from deaths, including suicide, to half of all eight-year-olds suffering from Foetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder.

Jabiru Court House

 












A three week visit to the Kimberley region is, almost by definition, superficial. Yet when police stations, courts and legal aid offices were so prominent in small outback towns, alarm bells rang for me. It's not the “Aboriginal Problem” but the “Aboriginals' Problem” ... and that is us, we Europeans who have trampled on a 40,000+year old culture, expecting those people to conform to European culture and yardsticks within the space of a mere two centuries. Failure to comply is being punished, mercilessly in most cases. I don't know what the answer is but what we are currently doing is wrong, and it isn't working.

Flora and Fauna

Plants and animals are not even my vague area of general knowledge, let alone expertise.
If anyone knows what the unnamed flowers are, do let me know .... provided it's a common name. If it's botanical names for the plants – keep those to yourself! One couple on board were plant nuts. None had a common name: never called a flower a daisy when they could call it Asteraceae. If I ever hear another Latin name again it will be too soon!! Very keen on always doing the right thing they were, except they had a real blind spot when it came to picking flowers.

Kakadu
More flowery things here

These are a few photos that worked – or almost worked! There aren't many photos of wildlife simply because we didn't see that many. The country is so vast, and so poor in terms of growing feed, that the animals are few and far between and most of the ones we did see were from the moving bus. If you think some of these photos are bad you should see the ones that didn't make it here!

Blue-winged kookaburra
More living creatures here

 















One photo I didn't even try to get as it never would have worked – sparkly-eyed spiders. Walking to the loo one night my head torch picked up these tiny, tiny sparkles, like pale blue diamonds, so, so pretty. On looking closely, they were spiders' eyes. An opportunity awaits for a professional photographer.