Category: Places

Caravan Parks, NSW, Places5 Comments

Urunga, NSW

Itching for Hitching

Just south of Coffs Harbour, the neat and spacious Urunga Heads Holiday Park is right on the water. Our van overlooks the spot where the Kalang River joins the Bellinger River to flow out to sea. There is a long boardwalk running all the way out to the surf beach. It has had many incarnations and was originally built for the pilot station staff to run out to the river mouth to guide the ships in. Sailing ships used to land here to transport the cedar out. After walking the boardwalk we’ve worked up a thirst so we head to … Continue reading Urunga, NSW

Places, Qld5 Comments

Causeway Lake

Itching for Hitching

We stop at Causeway Lake near Yeppoon in Queensland and I chat to fishermen who are working the ebb tide. They show me how to use a bait pump and they are sucking Nippers out of the mud. Nippers look like a white yabbie half the size of your little finger but with one giant pink claw as long as their body. Soldier crabs skitter across the sand nervously even though no one is interested in them. The water from the lake gushes out to sea at a fair speed and the fish are biting. Those nippers must taste damned … Continue reading Causeway Lake

Places, Vic10 Comments

Rutherglen, the wine town

Itching for Hitching

Established in 1860 when gold was discovered. The name of Rutherglen was decided upon when a local publican offered to shout the bar if he could name the town after his hometown in Scotland. Wine making is the mainstay of this area now after having fought back from being wiped out by phylloxera. Famous for its fortifieds, sweet, sticky and unctuous they’re enough to warm a winters evening by the fire. So important is wine to this town that even the Information Centre has a licence to sell wine and a visit to pick up a few brochures can turn … Continue reading Rutherglen, the wine town

Places, Vic6 Comments

A Dinner Worth its Weight in Gold

Itching for Hitching

I was writing a piece on the high incidence of gold discovery in Australian towns when friends invited us to visit the Tarnagulla Strictly Vintage Fair. I was keen to take part in the celebrations as this is such an interesting and lesser known town in the Victorian Goldfields. Our mate ‘R’ who was born and bred in Tarnagulla organised dinner at the only pub, The Golden Age, for a few mates who are  Old Tarnagullans and who now all live in Melbourne, though some like ‘R’ have smallholdings in the goldfields. …The front bar is crowded and a guitarist … Continue reading A Dinner Worth its Weight in Gold

Places, Vic9 Comments

Port Fairy

Itching for Hitching

It is wintry and very cold and windy in Port Fairy on Victoria’s west coast. We rug up and walk around Griffiths Island which is only metres from the shore. This is a place that holds a special meaning to me as I once worked with a gentleman by the name of John Griffiths who was a direct descendant of the Tasmanian entrepreneur and sealer John Griffiths who established a sealing business on this island long before Port Fairy was established. There is lichen covered basalt, oyster catchers dart across small beaches and tiny turban shells called Italian White Snails … Continue reading Port Fairy

NSW, Places9 Comments

Car Doors and Castles

Itching for Hitching

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