The little town of Ebor is high up on the Great Dividing Range on the Waterfall Way and not far from Dorrigo. You can feel the altitude here, 1350 metres. The vegetation is sparse and the trees have beards of … Continue reading Ebor Sports & Recreation Area
The Trial Bay gaol, near South West Rocks in NSW, was built to house the convicts that were to build the bay breakwater. After many years this task proved too difficult and the gaol was closed. In World War One … Continue reading Trial Bay Gaol
Just two kilometres off the Princes Highway and roughly halfway between Central Tilba and Narooma, the Mystery Bay campground is in a grove of spotted gums with views to the pretty little bay and Montague Island in the distance. The … Continue reading Mystery Bay, NSW
It’s 2013 and we break for a cool drink at the little town of Ulmarra on the banks of the Clarence River. Like many along this coast of the Northern Rivers region this town has also suffered recent flooding and the last vestiges are still visible, sand bags around the houses, muddy remnants and the ferry is out of action. We have a beer on the veranda of the pub and watch small dogs just being dogs, moseying around, sniffing and peeing on the veranda posts. No pedigrees around here. This is where the sugar cane fields start, wide expanses … Continue reading Ulmarra Hotel
There’s a little gem on the Murrumbidgee River in south western NSW. Balranald is so neat with its manicured lawns and pretty flower beds that you’d think that the Queen was due to pay a visit. In a district traversed … Continue reading Balranald
Two out of three ain’t bad. There’s another opal field about 60kms from The Ridge and it is home to 3 iconic pubs. We set off in a convoy of 3 cars down a good bitumen road to the tiny town of Cumborah. A little further on we turn onto an appalling dirt road that our mate Vee rates as worse than the Birdsville Track. Outback Jack is in the back seat thanking God that Vee has offered to take us in her car! We bump along swearing and cursing the road and the dust and reading car door signs … Continue reading Grawin Opal Fields, Lightning Ridge
Two streets down from the Opal Caravan Park is one of the famous Lightning Ridge Car Door Tours, the Red one. Thus we leave the bitumen to follow numbered red car doors to explore this town’s minefields and minefield is an appropriate description. Because people live on mining leases in Lightning Ridge their houses are as basic as possible. By order of law the land should only be used for mining not housing. The hillsides are littered with ramshackle dwellings, decaying caravans, tram cars, corrugated iron shanties and mullock heaps with rusting bucket structures atop that look like roller coasters, which … Continue reading Car Doors and Castles
Lightning Ridge is unique. Seven hundred kilometres from Sydney it feels like the outback but in Australian terms of distance it isn’t, really. An ironstone ridge rising from a floodplain it attracts lightning and thus the name.The Ridge is an opal mining town where people live above ground usually beside their mines. Unlike the opal towns of Coober Pedy and White Cliffs where they prefer to live underground because of the hot climate and the dry air in their mines. To the tourist it is a town of characters and eccentrics and never knowing whether the scruffy bearded guy in … Continue reading Lightning Ridge
There’s a shop in town called Mr Cheap and he advertises that he sells everything that a caravanner needs so we put him to the test. Just when we thought that we couldn’t find anything we realised that we needed solar lights for our guy rope pegs. Now where have I seen those lights recently? That’s right, the Bourke cemetery. Mr Cheap sells artificial flowers too. Continue reading Alight in Lightning Ridge
In Bourke we visit the cemetery to see the grave of Fred Hollows. Fred whose cataract surgery restored the sight to not only Aboriginals of the outback but underprivileged the world over. The cemetery is awash with artificial flowers and … Continue reading A Chance Meeting with the Dog Catcher
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