Day 8 Saturday 21/6/2025 Bellingen, sunny 11 – 20

We’re having a two night stay here so it’s a good chance to have a bit of a sleep in. Woody walks across the bridge into town to buy some fresh baked bread and croissants from the laneway for breakfast. It’s a delightful morning and the music festival is starting to set up. Before lunch we take a walk and when I get to the corner (after photographing a few plants, any wonder Woody won’t walk with me) I’m stopped by a parade of bongo playing hippie attired protesters ambling past. I feel like I’ve just been transported back to the 60’s. It seems that they’re protesting about everything: ‘No Means No’, ‘Feminism’, ‘Gender Equality’, ‘Indigenous Equality’, and against Patriarchy, Fishing and The System as in ‘Fxxx the System’. Now if they mean my gastric system, don’t bother it already is. The bloke standing next to me says “It looks like they’ve pretty well got it all covered”.

Moving on there are fruit bats chattering in the trees and the gardens are enviable, lush almost sub-tropical and brightly coloured. I’m sure you can tell that it’s the lushness and the colour that gets me. Oh, if only we could grow these plants in Melbourne.

Down by the Bellinger River people are having picnics on the bank even though it is still a little muddy from the recent flood. The amount of tree trunks caught in the bridge supports is a silent reminder.

After lunch we hit the footpaths again, Woody watches a boy catching an eel and I sit under an enormous Moreton Bay Fig in the park and sketch the Town Hall. The diameter of the fig must be equal to half the length of our caravan. This is also a chance to photograph a few other buildings around town. Bellingen started out as a cedar cutting town where logs were floated down the river. Many of the buildings that survive were designed and built by London born George Moore. As no bricks were available at the time he made his own from the river mud. George arrived here in 1881 and was still building in the area when he died in 1917*. To my mind he left a wonderful legacy and it’s a credit to both his ability and the local community to have kept so many of his buildings.

Back at camp there’s not much going on, a choir is singing in the hall, but that’s about it and it certainly doesn’t keep us awake.

*Source: Local history board.

Accom: $35.00