On the road

Tags

Binda, Bingara, Casino, country towns, Crookwell, Gulgong, Inverell, road trip

Country towns: Crookwell

Crookwell is a small town with a population of 2641 as counted in the 2016 census. Claims to fame? Renowned for potato farming, and home to NSW’s first wind farm.

Just out of Crookwell is the old settlement of Binda, a few stone houses and a church with a lych-gate all that remains of a once-thriving gold-rush town.

Country towns: Gulgong

Gulgong, the Wiradjuri word for deep waterhole, is a nineteenth century gold-mining town about 300 km north-west of Sydney, and briefly the childhood home of Henry Lawson, bush poet and short story writer. It’s main street is narrow and windy, designed for the passage of bullock drays rather than modern cars.

Country towns: Bingara 

Bingara is a quiet, historic, gold and diamond-mining town set in the Gwydir River Valley. Surrounded by cypress-covered mountains it is a popular with anglers and fossickers. Gold, sapphires and tourmalines are still occasionally found in the river and local creeks. 

Country towns: Inverell 

Inverell is the Gaelic word for the meeting place of swans. It’s is an elegant rural service centre located on a bend in the Macintyre River in a mixed farming district known for its wheat, grapes olives, maize, barley and oats as well as tin, sapphires, zircons and diamonds. It’s a popular haunt for fossickers who find topaz, quartz, silver, diamonds, agate, petrified wood, rhodorite, tourmaline and lead, as well as sapphires, diamonds and tin.

Country towns: Casino

The main street of Casino is wide, with a walkway along the middle if you don’t mind popping on and off around the plantings. The cement is decorated with an Art Deco design, marking it as an Art Deco town. It’s in the middle of beef and forestry country over 700 km north of Sydney. The story is that it was named after Monte Cassino, the Italian hill village where Poles fought in World War 2. Someone couldn’t spell and removed the second “s”.

After a few days on my son’s block, I need a return to the natural world, so I track down the  Jabiru Geneebeinga wetlands and take a leisurely sun-soaked, slightly boggy stroll before heading down to the coast and time with my sister’s family: three nieces, two spouses, three great-nephews, and two great nieces.

I was inspired to record my road trip in haiku and tanka to record by Suzanne’s “on the road” challenge, although I haven’t followed her specific prompts. Thanks to her for suggesting a way to capture fleeting impressions as the road unwound over four days.

My tour guide, apart from following my nose, was http://www.aussietowns.com.au/, a wealth of information assembled by a retired journalist with the ambition to write about every Australian town that offers anything interesting.

Beach architecture

Tags

Potato Point beach

We had a flood a week or two ago. Tree trunks and large logs roared down the racing Tuross River, and out to sea. They arrived riding the surf onto Potato Point beach, defacing its pure sand. But where I saw ugliness, holiday makers saw possibilities. Soon the beach was busy with engineers and architects and labourers, and the supply of timber was raised from horizontal to a variety of verticals. Architectural style varied: shack, minimalist structure also serving as hanging space, bungalow, tepee, miniature Shinto shrine. The architecture wasn't brutalist: seaweed, pebbles, logs, beach grass, shadow and view became decorative elements.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

In search of knowledge

Tags

Braidwood, Cairns, Liston, Molong

I'm wondering whether there's such a thing as typically Australian architecture. This is a collection of buildings from a variety of places. Can you let me know by number which ones don't match buildings in your experience of other places? If they look familiar, can you say where you saw their cousins (apart from Australia?)

 

1: War memorial, Boorowa

 

2: Country town NSW

 

3/4: Cairns - pub and public building

 

5/6: Queenslanders, Cairns

 

7: Church on the Mt Lindesay highway

 

8: Cottage, Liston NSW

 

9: Palen Creek Hall, NSW

 

10: Powerhouse, Molong

 

11/12: Courthouse and house, Molong

 

13: House, Braidwood

 

Posted with Blogsy

Gas tanks

Tags

art, Tanks Arts Centre

I return to the Botanic Gardens early in the morning to check out the Tanks Arts Centre. Three World War 2 naval oil storage tanks have been converted into an arts precinct for exhibitions and performance. My beautifier said they were a must-see and she was right. To enter the precinct, I pass through an immense gate beside a wall of gargoylish mosaic, some of it overwritten by twining roots. Each tank is also magnificently gated. Even the bare outside of Tank 1has a rough beauty, that beauty that comes so mysteriously from dilapidation

To enter the gallery I cross a small bridge over a pool reflecting a circle of ferns. The inside space is vast: partitions to normal ceiling height create a series of pale-walled galleries and the office is a curved module plonked off centre. Some of the paintings are hung dramatically on the curved inner wall of the tank at eye level, amongst signs of industrial wear and tar and streaks of black grease. A huge rusting pipe remains, angling its way up beside a ladder.

I'm so taken with the tank that the artworks take second place. They are all by local artists. A collage portrait of grandfather and grandson captures a wonderful tenderness. There are images of coral, cassowaries and rainforest and a basket woven from sea-rope and flotsam-jetsam. But it's the venue that holds my attention.

When I tell my niece I spent the morning amongst gas tanks, she looks at me pityingly and mocks me unmercifully. Little does she know the many pleasures gas tanks provide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Leaving home …

Tags

Blacktown, Moruya River

… again!

I'm off to Cairns for my niece's wedding. But I journey slowly.

I drive along the highway beside the hoop of a Clarice Beckett rainbow in a Clarice Beckett sky. The high clouds are billows of grey overlaid with apricot, above them vivid slashes of orange, and along the mountain range horizon, an echoing horizon of leaden clouds. The base sky is a luminous grey.

I spend the night with my friend who sings with magpies. I feast on her view out over the Moruya river to the sea; and on kale (for the first time), a curried lentil-and-meat pie, and pear and poppyseed cake. I retreat to bed between crisp cotton sheets while she plays ukelele and recorder. The music flows downstairs, and for the first time nearly forever I go to sleep without a book in my hand.

In the morning we walk down to the wharf, past mangroves and reflections. The river winds its way to the mountains, peaceful in the morning light. A young girl on a bike passes us, gripping a fishing line and we wish her good luck. We chat and enjoy the silence and then I work up a sweat climbing the access stairs, past a plant that reminds me of fritillaries: practice for the steep road that leads to my Cairns cabin. Back at her place I look in awe at the garden she has created only eight months after moving in: at the swelling Jap pumpkins, the circular wood stepping stones, the tepee for climbing beans, the extraordinarily healthy looking strawberry plant, and the wonderful higgledy piggledy fence that keeps the macropods out. An elegant iron seat rescued from the tip looks out over the flat swirls of the Moruya River as it approaches the ocean.

We head into Moruya for coffee before I board the Sydney bus. I have a view through two windows. Through one the landscape has a pinky orangey glow, like bushfire light. Through the other it is a bluey grey, the difference replicating the colour propensities of my two cameras. Splats of rain run down the glass.

A woman moves into the seat beside me. I covertly assess her. About my age I think, maybe a year or two older. When we strike up a conversation, I discover she's 82. This is the second time I've made such an assessment lately. I've crossed an age border in my thinking. We begin to chat when the traffic slows to a crawl, and the bus begins its slow slide into ninety minutes late. As always, there are many fascinations in the life of a stranger. The sense of a village life in Kurnell, population 2000, bus service minimal, distance from Sydney's CBD 35 kilometres. A marriage between a traveller and a homebody. A collection of wine-makers in the family. The difficulties of talking to our children about end-of-life issues.

Finally the bus reaches Sydney as dusk falls and I capture a few city buildings with my iPhone and a train to my sister-in-law's in Blacktown. We yack and eat and wine (with unusual restraint) until 11. She is an avid and rigorous family historian and it is always good to catch up on the latest find or the latest brick wall, even though it isn't my blood family she's investigating. I see yet again how rich her life has been in experiences and in generosity. She is in a sense part-custodian of fifty years of my life, and my admiration for her deepens every time we spend time together.

In the morning I sit on the porch in the sun, idle and relaxed. The sun makes tiger shadows on my leg as it passes through the porch table. I notice the red veins in the leaves of the plan in the red and white striped pot and the nubby stripes where the leaves spray out. I begin to relax into thoughts of a holiday in the far north.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted with Blogsy

Visiting an old friend

Tags

Bogey Hole

As my friend was leaving the cafe after we’d enjoyed coffee and cake, the waitress said: “I hope you don’t mind me saying this. I’ve been watching you and your friend and I couldn’t help noticing how much you were enjoying each other’s company. I hope my friend and I can be like that in many years time. You made my day.”

 

For a few days on my journey north I stayed with my friend Rosemary. Our friendship began in the early 1950s, and this comment by the waitress made our day too. Rosemary lives in a gracious terrace house in Newcastle, lovingly furnished in period. She shares it with a very beautiful cat called Nina.

We spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around the mall, me relishing the opportunity to buy fresh turmeric and tom yum spices; visit an exhibition of textiles by Judy Hooworth, and a textile shop attached to the Timeless Textiles gallery; admire old (by Australian standards) buildings; eat a rich-looking chocolate gelato; enjoy a few murals; and photograph the bark of street trees.

The next day we took a leisurely stroll along the waterfront path to the Bogey Hole, originally dug out of solid rock by convicts as a swimming pool for their brutal commandant, Captain Morisset. The cliff face above the path is cut away showing layers – soil, coal, slate, sandstone. Tiny lizards scurry into the foliage lining the steep path up to the surveillance fort and the view north opens out as we head back down for lunch.

Newcastle is definitely a place worth visiting – heritage, history, architecture, art and scenery – to say nothing of a wonderful friend.

The cathedral

Posted with Blogsy