Kicking back on Holidays

Narooma caravan park......(hey, you cant hear the screaming teenagers from this distance.)

Every now and then you have just got to leave the cold country behind and get a bit of salt air up your nose. So we packed up the Monaro, left the dog to be pampered by my parents and hit the road down the south coast to Narooma (which lies on the lower coast of NSW). A leisurely 6 and a half hours later and we established camp in the worlds noisiest caravan park. (It was Easter after-all).

Glasshouse Rocks just south of Narooma. 19 deg' C surf and crazy rock formations.

If you find yourself in Narooma, have a go at the sea-food on offer. Top class. I ate prawns, oysters, mussels, King-fish until it was time to come home and still was ready for more.
The waters were rough due to cyclonic influences up north, but amazingly clear. Plenty of empty beaches to wander.

Looks like the spot for lunch. Fish and chips, Ocean views, Parked Petrol Tanker.....

We cruised into Central Tilba for the festival which was a great turn out for a tiny town (congratulations all organisers). Tilba is a small town of timber buildings mostly dating from the 1890's. It has a history of gold mining, timber harvesting and cheese making. I got myself a good greasy-wool jumper from here.

We also did Mogo over (another little township on the Highway) and bought up on some local fare. Amoung a stack of other stuff I got myself a nice wooden drum here. Hayley added to her bead asortments.

With 2 kilos of local prawns in the esky we headed home to Woodabyna. The Monaro never missed a beat, but I was glad to get the layer of salt off it.

Its the end of April and the frosts have set in as a regular occurance. The vegie garden is over and an extra blanket came out of the cupboard.

Another Rock in the Wall

All you needed to know about rock walls, but were too lazy to read....

Corner

When people wander out for the first visit or so, usually their eye is taken to the rock walls located up the back paddock. There are two stock yards with walls ranging from 1.3 to 1.8 metres high and around a metre thick made out of local basalt. The rocks on our place all consists of 'floaters' which are relatively uniform rounded or flat. Being basalt, they are not light weight. A half-trailer load has the trailer sitting down on the stops with the tyres rubbing on the mudguards.

The rock walls are likley to have been built about the mid to late 1800's when the country was getting cleared and patches were getting ploughed up for crops. There are 1000's of rocks just under the soil, so working with a team of horses and a mulboard plough would have been a day of hard slog and the following day picking up the rocks. Rocks were put to good use and they made built up roads and stock yards out of them.

Gateway

The two walls are built in two different ways. The one closer to the house has been built on very large foundation stones (likely to have been pulled into place with horses) and constructed out of similarly shaped rocks all the way to the top of the wall. About one rock in three has been split in half to provide a wedge and to lean the wall slightly back into the centre-line. The one up on the hill with the tank-stand is also built on large foundation stones but has a 'core' made up of 1000's of cricket-ball sized stones and encased in larger rock wall structure. This latter wall has almost vertical faces. It once had a roof over part of it and a twin milking stand and bail set up. There is still the remains of white-wash on some of the rocks.

These walls have been built by tough, strong people. Much tougher and stronger than me.

The walls are likely to have held sheep pre-fence days, when alot of the country was still forested. There was once quite a few walls about the locality, but with the advent of larger machines, fencing wire and rabbits, many walls were pulled down and used to fill errosion wash-outs and to make roads over boggy land. Many walls harboured rabbits that couldnt be trapped or poisoned.

And the walls at our place? They continue to harbour rabbits and slowly they are falling down. They also provide good homes for snakes and lizards and all sorts of crawlies. (read this as a good thing!). The one closer to the house would make a beaut garden enclosure, keeping the cold winds at bay and providing a terrific solar trap with huge thermal mass.... we would just need to keep the rabbits at bay.

Little town of Grenfell NSW

Grenfell facing the south, showground at right bottom corner and Young road at the top.

Last week, I filled up the extra seat in the Piper and flew down to Kerang, Victoria to have a cuppa n' cake with an old mate. Would'nt you know it, the flight path cut straight across Woodabyna, Junction Reefs, Canowndra, Conimbla, and Grenfell and Weddins. (Weddins will be an upcoming entry, Im sure).

Grenfell is a small Central West town with a population of about 3400. It's main industries revolve around farming of sheep, cattle and cereal crops. It was the birth-place of Henry Lawson.... 'Listen to this.... its straight from the tourist brochure!... At school, we learnt to recite the Australian National Anthem, the school creed, and the cover of the 'Welcome to Grenfell' tourist brochure.

When we flew over, the country was still looking very dry. Dams are low and a lot of country destocked. Its the first flight Ive taken over Grenfell country, and Ive got to say, it was all very intersesting, a bit nostalgic... and the plane was so noisy that I wasnt bothered to tell anyone the stories from this place and that.

Grenfell facing easterlish. The Mid western H'way running straight on through. Most people stay on the highway and pass through, thinking that the town has no Main Street. The 'Main is the curved detour to the left of the Highway in the centre of town. It paralels the Emu Creek, which is where the town sprang up as a gold mining villiage in tyhe 1850's.