Snowies without snow

I am looking forward to today’s trek. We are going up into the Snowy Mountains and around the road called The Alpine Way. There should be no problems for although there is a misty rain falling, there is and has been no snow this winter. I expect to see patches up high, but there has been not enough to block any roads.
We set out to leave Tumut when I suddenly feel sorry for a lovely dog that lives in the B&B where we have been staying. It has been trying to get me to throw a ball for him for days, well, once won’t hurt. Wrong decision. The dog is so pleased it goes mad and races round and round and round the car. How do we leave?
“It will get out of the way when I start the engine and move” says Scruffy Man. But it doesn’t. It gets even more excited, why isn’t it dizzy? In desperation I find his ball again and throw it as hard as I can, motion Scruffy Man to get out fast and chase the car down the drive before the doggy friend can retrieve his ball and start the circling again. We are off!
The mountains are heavily wooded with clouds clinging to the valleys. Naturally we stop at every lookout, it is beautiful.

We finally get to above the snow line, if there was any snow, and the trees which had become stunted, disappear. this is country of purple and gold heath with little creeks and lakes. Poles mark the edge of the road in case of snow (ha ha)

This is really part of the Monaro Plains and normally witheringly cold. I have left The Man from Snowy River because after all, that great wild chase did not occur in the Snowies despite the name. I have moved on to

Out on a plain, just over a rise,
Stood Nimitybell, on Monaro;
Cold as charity, cold as hell.
Bleak, bare, barren Nimmitybell -
Nimitybell on Monaro.

Part of a great bush poem reminiscent of Baron Munchausen.
It froze the blankets, it froze the fleas,
It froze the sap in the blinkin’ trees,
It made a grindstone out of cheese,
Right ‘here in Monaro

I ketched a curlew down by the creek;
His feet were froze to his blessed beak-,
‘E stayed like that for over a week -
That’s cold on Monaro.

Why, even the air got froze that tight
You’d ‘ear the awfullest sounds at night,
When things was put to a fire or light,
Out’ere on Monaro.

and so it goes, ” It’s blitherin’cold on Monaro.” but not today and anyway, it maligns Nimmitabel which is a lovely town.
We continue across the bare plain until we reach Kiandra which I love because it does not have the great hype of the ski fields. It is old with remains of the early gold mining machinery gradually getting eaten up by lichens. You would have to be keen to mine in this area, but I am not a lover of cold.

We have not seen a skerick of snow and make our way up to Cabramurra, the highest town in Australia. I taught a girl from that town, she was at a boarding school in Sydney because they spent so much of the time snowed in, she had no other way of getting a reasonable education. Not today, there is no snow surprising but it should mean we have no problems getting through. Wrong. The Snowies authority must feel it is bad publicity not to have roads blocked by the opening of the snow season.The road to Khancoben has a locked gate on it with a sign warning the road ahead is closed by snow and ice. Wishful thinking and also the end of my wish to do The Alpine Way. I will have to wait until the Snowy Authority decides it is summer.

Wagga to Junee

The Western slopes towns are really lovely. We drive through Adelong,an  old gold-mining town with all that charm but a shop advertising Rustic Creations is a worry. Chairs with the bark still on the wood and one leg longer than the others comes to mind. Still everything is wonderful winter green with a nice chill, not the unpleasant freezing weather it could have been.

Was Wagga always that boring? A wonderful glass museum but everything is large, settled and boring. . I suppose it is pretty but I feel it is so large it does not have much character. I once felt that about Grafton but changed my mind. This town should show the wealth of the early graziers . It is the centre of the Catholic diocese and has a very impressive cathedral.Love the billabongs and Murrumbidgee  that run through it with parks beside. I think back to an early visit to Wagga. Mrs Berg was about five, Mr Plum three. He had a sandwich he wanted to eat  but the Wagga park had a large flock of geese that had other ideas. I looked up to see Mr Plum running for his life with an enormous flock of geese after him. They thought he was going to be easy to intimidate and they wanted his sandwich. After rescuing him he kept sobbing that birds shouldn’t chase little boys. I agreed with him but remembering the incident now, it is so like his own son.

Leaving Wagga and heading north across country that is gentle slopes rather than the big hills that come before the Snowy Mountains. It reminds me we are on the edge of the plains. There is a burn off of stubble beside the road. Always worth a stop to hear the crackle of flames and smell the smoke.I thought the practice of burning off in winter had stopped, but it is better than a full scale fire in summer.

We go to Junee for no other reason than I remember it being special. I now call it the town time forgot.It has not climbed into the twentieth century yet, let alone the twenty-first. A railway town with a wonderful Victorian station and enormous Victorian Hotels. The one I remember is closed down but peering through the glass in the doorway you can just make out magnificent staircases starting one on each side of the hall then curving around until both stairs join to continue to the second story. Very little butchering of old grand buildings, although some have been allowed to gently disintegrate. There is even a liquorice factory looking like something from Dickens, a tall block of brick.  The enormous railway station has been preserved in its original grand style.

We went to see the enormous roundhouse that was built at the time steam trains were king. We got there well before closing time but the gentlemen running it decided it was too cold and we could come back at midday tomorrow. Umm, no. We still had a chance to have a quick snap of the interior before we headed back to Tumut.

“What will we eat tonight Scruffy Man?”
“What about Chinese”
“OK, as long as it is ABC (Australian Born Chinese), developed by the gold rush Chinese with lots of things like peas and zucchini with perhaps some tinned pineapple. We can get the real Asian stuff back in Sydney, let’s go Australian ethnic. Fun.”

Jingellic on The Murray

Apple country at Batlow, hoping to buy some apples but we are out of luck.Orchards are bare but create interesting lines with the cloth used to protect them. Scruffy Man is off to try to photograph it, but it has to be special for me to use it. I do like the one he took below. The screens in rows that are there to protect the developing apples are looped up and all looks cold and bare. Love the clouds.

South to Tumbarumba. There are enormous silver birches growing in people’s yards. What did I say about never wanting to live where silver birches grow? People have piles of cut wood for winter burning that are as long as the sides of their house and higher than the roof. Not for me, we are in the opening weekend of the ski season and there is no snow at all,even looking towards Mt Kosciusko. It’s too warm and I hope it stays that way.
On to Jingellic on the Murray. We plan to stop and have a meal at the Bridge Hotel. Meal? I mean trout. I think I like it even better than barramundi. We have to stop at Jingellic to photograph the river. People have built fires along the bank and the pylons of the old bridge are just asking to be photographed

.

What a beautiful day! We have gone all the way to the Murray at Jingelic crossed over and followed it along on theVictorian side. Lots of photos of course, it is a grey day and the river is reflecting like a mirror. We are on the way back, planning to have our trout dinner when Suddenly,

“Watch out Scruffy Man”
“What, what, what”. he sees nothing but a big four-wheel drive with its high beam on coming the other way.
Phew! A closer shave than is comfortable, what I saw was an enormous kangaroo deciding suicide was the only way and intending to get hit by two vehicles, one going in each direction. We just missed, what a mess an animal that size would make to the car, even with bull bars. The other car missed as well but each car missed by a matter of millimetres. An African animal expert I knew once wondered out aloud why Australian animals are so dumb. I blame the eucalyptus in their diet and thousands of years isolation. That was too close for comfort!

Note to myself. Don’t drive at dusk, it is too dangerous.

Tumut

“We are going down through Gundagai then across to Tumut” says Scruffy Man
“Great”I say and start on There’s a track winding back.
“NOOO”  he says,”we are not even at Marulan”
“But I must have a good sing of Gundagai before I start on The Man From Snowy River and I almost know all the verses of that.”
Scruffy Man is desperate.
“What about Magical Marulan where I met my Ellen.”
“Truly horrible and it doesn’t even rhyme properly”
“Neither does there’s a track winding back”
“I know, this is better …..

My Ma said no foolin’ when I’m back in Marulan to marry my sweetheart Flo”

That one did not deserve a comment.

And so we wind our way past Gundagai to Tumut. to have our minds diverted by a little Art Deco theatre, totally restored. I love Deco theatres and I drool.

Mount Solitary

Finally we have a day off and headed to a place we love. Leura in the Blue Mountains, on a track that wanders along the edge of the escarpment to Wentworth Falls and with spectacular views across the valley to Mount Solitary. Scruffy Man has a brand new camera and is experimenting with the HDR capabilities. Now photos across the wilderness ,is often disappointing, with the wilderness becoming a blur and the wonderful orange cliffs, becoming a nondescript grey. Not so with the new camera, it shows it just as it was and we are delighted.

Mt Solitary brings back so many memories. Scruffy Man loved bushwalking and once Mr Plum was old enough to carry his own sleeping bag, he went too. They had some wonderful times, sleeping in the Blue Gum Forest among giant trees alight with fireflies, walking in canyons where the cliffs shut out the light, along cliff edges with enormous drops beside them and one terrifying hike where they climbed the track up Govetts Leap to find the track  gradually disintegrate as they climbed until they were on a non-existent track 1000 metres above the valley. Mr Plum, still a boy becomes hysterical. Poor Scruffy Man has to cajole him the last climb to the top. No rails, just the rough track and the enormous drop. At the top is a sign warning that the track was closed! Pity they didn’t put the sign at the bottom of the walk, poor Mr Plum still has nightmares of that hike.

Mt Solitary was a favourite hike with them. They had to walk down the Golden Stair which is lovely in itself, across the jungle of the valley then up the Mountain. Once up there, they can look back across the whole Blue Mountain’s settlement. One notable hike, I received a phone call late in the afternoon. It was early in the days of mobile phones and I was concerned they were still in Katoomba. “No,” said Mr Plum, “We can see Katoomba but we are on the top of Mt Solitary and Dad is sitting on the edge of the cliff, dangling his feet over the edge”

Aah, modern technology.

HDR and the Hawkesbury

We feel ignorant. We take all these photos, just point and click and have never learnt anything else but basics. Scruffy Man has a fancy book on High Definition Resolution and I own the latest photoshop which I only use a small part and it is time to improve. I expect the first attempts to be dreadful but just trying is fun. The trip we decided on was along the Hawkesbury where there is the problem of high cliffs above the river. Thursday? so off we go.

Through Windsor, across the river to stop at Wilberforce to get cheese, crackers and grapes for lunch. Simple but not good for a diet, pity I am such a cheese lover. This is an old area on the edge of the city and the locals try very hard with their businesses, put their heart and soul into them, with varying results. One shop here advertises it is Under New Management and in sparkling new print says it sells Motor Bikes,Chainsaws and Collectibles. Obviously goods the owner is passionate about. A home painted sign nearby advertises. Milk, Bread, Toilets. I wonder what you are supposed to do first? Along the river are other residents attempts at DYO beautification of varying quality. The usual microwaves turned into letter boxes but one does stand out. On the edge of the road is a home-made emu. That is nicer!

On past Ebenezer we come to the site of first Church of England Church in the area. Right on the Hawkesbury as is the lovely stone Presbyterian church up the road. That church buried all the free settlers, this one buried the convicts as well. All that is left now are the graves and so many still show that in the ground lies a first fleeter. I cannot imagine how hard it would be to come over in the Sirius in 1788 never to see England again and to die in this foreign wilderness. I know even from talking to my mother in law that the countryside which I so love, they find very ugly and strange. “Too many trees.” my grandmother used to say, ” What do you want trees for? Just bark up side and leaves on top” She was born in 19th century Sheffield and in the sixty years she lived in Australia, she always kept her Brittishness getting a broader and broader Yorkshire accent as she got older. She left all her family behind as the convicts did, never to see them again.

I am a sucker for graveyards and this is particularly lovely one. green grass with festoons of flowering weeds and with worn gravestones on the banks of the river.Hudreds of Welcome Swallows swoop and dive overhead. The usual smattering of sad inscriptions including one by a mother to her two baby girls who had died. It was 1830 and they were nine month old twins.

Scruffy Man is looking for somewhere to take his HDR photos. He has actually remembered his tripod to take the requisite number of photos. He has found an old broken down building full of rubbish which he feels is Don’t know if it will work but it is first try. A middle-aged fat woman in extraordinarily tight shorts comes hurrying out to see if he is stealing stuff. If he was, I thought she would have been pleased to get rid of some of the garbage.

Derelict Shed

For a first attempt I was pretty pleased. All done by Scruffy Man on the computer at home of course. You can pretty well see everything but… it is a bit blaah. See how the next one works out. We really need lessons.

We go back up to where the Colo River meets the Hawkesbury, across the bridge and follow the river on the Bicentenary Road on the north side. Mainly dirt, it hugs the river passing run down water skiing campgrounds. “Do people still lose their legs from cuts made in the water” asked Scruffy Man. “It doesn’t look as if many people ski any more”

I know the red green algae was so bad during the drought that the public toilets had the water to the hand washing basins turned off. The water for them was pumped from the river and you were better off with the germs than washing your hands in water laced with the algae. The drought is over now and the river looks wonderful. Surely it is back to normal.

Across the river on the ferry and up to Wiseman’s Ferry. It is exactly what we were looking for with high sandstone cliffs looming over a broad river sprinkled with boats. Wonderful cloudy sky as well. Out comes the tripod and a busy time taking three shots of different exposures of everything. At home we will see how it all turns out.

Wisemans Ferry

Rather liked the Wisemans Ferry one. Pity the merging of the photos put the ferry in three places looking like the whole river is dammed. Oh well, live and learn.

Along the Hawkesbury

Dunn’s Swamp

A new day and we are off to Dunn’s Swamp. Seems like a strange thing in the dry Wollemi National Park, but all becomes clear when information tells us it was built for the Kandos cement works and then abandoned. On the Cudgegong River, this weir has been left so long it has become a naturalized lake.

The road takes us through Kandos of the cement works and onto historic Rylestone. Love the old Georgian homes still there. We follow a country road to the mountains. The road crosses green rolling hills, crossing little creeks and passing herds of curious cows. Typical of the western slopes from Queensland to Victoria and very lovely.

We reach the edge of the Wollemi National park and come across some of the best “Gardens of Stone” formations I have seen. Creepy pagodas and beehive shaped sandstone reminiscent of Picnic at Hanging Rock. Enormous boulders litter the valleys, obviously broken away from the sandstone above and many have been eroded into strange shapes. The gaps between the pagodas and beehives look as if they lead to mazes. you could get lost in.

Dunn’s Swamp is a long serpentine lake lined with bulrushes. It is alive with wildlife, Purple Swamp-hens have taken over the aggressive role of the brush turkeys elsewhere. They are also so funny to watch, their toes are so long they always seem to be in danger of treading on their own feet. To overcome the problem they have to lift their feet high in the air which gives them a very awkward gait but better than constantly tripping over I suppose.

There are supposed to be lots of platypus in the swamp and it certainly looks like platypus water. I must admit I have never seen one in the wild. I have seen multitude of other animals including koalas, echidnas, Tasmanian devils, so many of the weird and wonderful Aussie animals but never a platypus. Scruffy Man says it is a conspiracy. There are no platypus and the ones in the zoos are animatronic ones. They were a totally unbelievable animal and it just goes to show, there are none.

We spend hours at the swamp, picnicking walking along the edge and lounging on the flat slabs of rock at the edge. It is very beautiful. On the weekends you can hire canoes and the bendy shape of the lake means there is always another bend to paddle around. Love to go boating here. The beehive rock formations go right down into to lake. These formations also create a natural playground for kids to play on at the camping ground. There is even a slope between the rocks which has been worn down by kids using it as a slippery dip after climbing the boulders behind.

Back through Kandos where we admire their all concrete band stand. Nice to know all the cement was used for such a useful monument but even nicer to know they no longer need to use the dam the factory built so many years ago. Now to find a band.

Back to Turon Gates. No lyrebird today but another real thrill. Tiny little birds are flitting around the ground with flashes of bright red. How lovely,Red-browed Firetail Finches but if I am wrong Mrs Plum will correct me. Back to Sydney tomorrow.

Niaa niaa. says Miss Wow, you must be blind Scruffy Man. I was at The Blue Lake Jenolan on the same day and actually photographed one. Here it is —a platypus!