Winter Day WIIW

Well we staggered home from Brisbane just before midnight the other night.
It is about 5 – 6 hours’ drive from here and we were delayed in getting away.

So back to last week’s  WIIW

There were three guesses.
Susan guessed: “An out-of-focus shot of the side railing on a bridge?”
No, but  your guess is probably the closest. It is a structure similar to an old timber bridge. 60%
Marcy guessed: “or distant raised highway? Or cracks in a wall...? Honestly, nothing comes to me. But I'll be curious to find out!”
Well your shot-gun approach has missed the mark, 30%
Finally Misha guessed: “I also think it's a raised highway.”
I can see why you guessed that, but no 30%

Meet Coffs Harbour Jetty.

I took this on my lunch break last Monday (please forgive the dodgy quality I only had my phone)

Despite it being winter down this way it was a glorious day so I went for a stroll in my break.
My new office is about five minutes’ walk from the vantage point where I took these.

Coffs Harbour is about a 90 minute drive from our mountain hideaway. Not too bad for a bush commute time!

The jetty was completed in 1892 and in the early days formed the main link between Coffs and Sydney.
In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century the only practical means of transport along the NSW coast was by sea. The north coast railway line, between Sydney and Brisbane, was not begun until 1905 and was not finished until 1932 with the building of the bridge over the Clarence River at Grafton.

This piccie from Wikipedia shows the Jetty in its heyday.
The ship the SS Fitzroy did a weekly run between Coffs and Sydney between 1912 and 1921 when it sunk in a storm with the loss of 31 lives of the 35 people aboard.


These days of course people fly between Coffs and Sydney (or drive if they don’t mind 6-8 hours in a car). So the Jetty is nothing but a tourist attraction and a handy place to cast a fishing line.
This last piccie shows  the whole harbour. The modern marina and fishing fleet harbour is on the left side between the mainland and Muttonbird Island.

Beauty and the Beast?

As you know I only work three days a week these days.

Well because I have to attend a couple of meetings later in the week I am not working today.

Which is good because it gives me a chance to take it easy.

In search of a warmer day I headed down out of the mountains to Coffs Harbour.

Down on the coast it was a typical winter day at 20⁰ C (68⁰F). I just love a sub-tropical climate :-) 

I had a short stroll through the North Coast Regional Botanical Garden which mostly features Oz natives.

One of the few piccies I took was of this Abutilon flower (a native related to Hibiscus I'm not sure of the species).
 
Not a great piccie, but as I was shooting it I was distracted  bye the stare of an inhabitant of the shrub.

In spite of her aggressive stare I couldn't resist getting a closer shot...

Al Returns

Well I didn’t fall off the face of the Earth.

On Tuesday night my eldest brother Mike phoned me. He had heard from my Mother’s husband that Mum had been taken into hospital that day.

Despite being elderly Mum and her husband live on a farm in the sticks about 40 minutes from the nearest (small) town Dorrigo. Mum had woken to excruciating abdominal pain and after phoning their doctor called an ambulance. She was taken to Dorrigo hospital which has a small emergency department. I was told she would be transferred to the nearest base hospital in Coffs Harbour about 100km away on Wednesday morning.

Mike lives about 5 hours’ drive from Mum while I am about 15 hours’ away.

So I got on the first flight I could to Coffs the next day. From here in Melbourne it is an hour flight to Sydney, where I had to wait for another plane for the hour long flight to Coffs.

Fortunately, Mum responded to treatment and we were able to take her home on Friday. I got home late last night. She is well on the way to recovery.

Needing to relax after a harrowing week I went waterfall hunting this afternoon. The result: piccies of the Olinda Falls on the flanks of Mount Dandenong just outside Melbourne.

My Mum’s Place

Tonight I want to say a bit about my trip to my Mum’s place.

I flew from Melbourne to Coffs Harbour on the Mid-North Coast of NSW where Mum came to pick me up.

From there we drove inland up to Dorrigo which sits at about 3000 feet in the Great Dividing Range. The north east corner of NSW is one of the wettest parts of Australia. With the ending of many years of drought it is really wet there at the moment. In fact the area is the wettest I have seen it since the 1970s.

This first piccie is taken through the windscreen of the ute (= utility = pickup truck) that Mum used to collect me from the airport. We were stopped at this traffic light. I thought the light on the road in the early evening fog looked worth capturing.The light is there on the Dorrigo Mountain road because of the wet. Beyond the light half of the road has slipped down the mountain with the rain. The engineers have decided the remains of the road are safe enough to use, but there is only room for traffic to go one way at a time.

The next morning I was up bright and early and out with my camera. This second piccie is the little house that my Mum and her husband Stan live in. It was built in the early 20th century by Stan’s parents. Stan came back in the 1970s to look after his aging mother which is when he met my Mum.

We (my Mum, my brother and I) were living on another ‘bush block’ nearby which is how Mum and Stan first met. After a friendship of about 15 years they eventually married.

This piccie of one of the paddocks shows how lush and green things are there at the moment.
One tradition on an Aussie farm is a series of decaying vehicles. You never throw anything out because it just might be handy one day…
I have to admit that I helped contribute to the farm junk yard here. This decaying Toyota was my first ever car.

While this Ford was my eighth.
It was bright and shiny when I bought it, but the local road soon knocked it around so badly that it wasn’t worth repairing. So it sits where I parked it in about 1996.

I turned my attention to capturing some of the local wildlife.

A Superb Blue Wren.
Then I tried to get a decent shot of a Fire-Tailed Finch, but they were hiding.
A not great shot of a Willy Wagtail.
And the firetails were still not cooperating.