A late answer

Apologies for failing to post an answer for WIIW last night. Unfortunately our landline phone and hence internet was down.

Well this WIIW only attracted four guesses, three of them were biological in nature,

Linda G said “Fish gills?”

Christine said “Oh dear... Something on the side of a train?”
Which wasn’t a million miles away, but then she changed her mind, “But then on the other hand, it looks rather rubbery. Give in!”

Anne guessed, “I'm with Linda, although I'm going to say some kind of reptillian gills. Like on a lizard kind of thing. (Are they reptiles or amphibians?)”
I guess you mean something like an axolotl?

Well unfortunately the object in question is not at all biological except that it does have some  moss, and lichen growing on it. So no points for any of those answers.

Which brings us to Marcy who guessed “a vent perhaps?”

That is exactly right! 100%. No bonus points for guessing what it was on
.
I found this abandoned Toyota in the Toorongo River valley a couple of years ago. I just had to capture the contrast of the decaying equipment and the lush mountain river valley.

If you look closely you can see the vent on the side of the engine bay behind the front mudguard.

My First Car

Believe it or not my Piccie of the day is of my first car. 

 

A 1972 Toyota Corona Mark II

As I have alluded more than once I am a country boy.

I bought this car when I was 18 and at University the first time. 

I went to Uni that first time in Armidale NSW about 110km (about 70 miles) from where I grew up.

A friend had rebuilt the car from the parts of three wrecks and was planning to use it for rally driving. But his plans changed and he decided to sell.

I needed a car and the price of $500 was something this poor student could just about scrape together. As it happened I gave Mike $300 and a Gold Sovereign coin I had in my coin collection.

Me (about 20) and Ian (about 18)

 Well that car did me sterling service. Being a young and silly person I drove it everywhere - Sydney 475km (296 miles) in six hours. Brisbane 464 Km (290 miles) in four and a half hours through the mountains  along the New England Highway (I said I was young and silly). Armidale is on the Northern Tablelands of NSW, at about 1,000metres (3,280 feet) above sea level. Because of the cooler mountain climate the first European settlers dubbed the area New England. I found  the highway was almost deserted late on Saturday nights and so the best time to travel.

My Toyota was the car I had when I married Deb. 

I'm the Baby on the left, Deb is my child bride. The groom's men are my elder brother Michael and Ian. The bride's maids, page and flower girl are Deb's siblings

We took it on our honeymoon, we were so strapped for cash that we camped  on the NSW north coast for our honeymoon.

About a year after we were married, we bought a newer car (a 1978 Holden). My younger brother Ian and I resprayed the Toyota so he could use the car now he was at Uni. 

Ian drove the car for another couple of years. Then he bought a newer car (a 1980 Nissan ute).

It then passed to my Mum because her car had broken down. Mum drove it for another three or four years between Armidale where she was working part time and the farm where she lives with her husband Stan (next door to the farm I grew up).

The car’s useful days came to an end when mum fell asleep at the wheel.

But maybe the car was looking after her, Mum woke up in time to avert a total disaster but the car was damaged to the point it was no longer worth repairing.

A frequent Oz bush tradition is to have a car graveyard on a farm and Stan’s place is no different (you just never know when a part might come in handy).

I half imagine that when I go back to visit, the car that was a part of years of our lives is kind of keeping an eye on us.

I'm Back!

Well I finally got my rotten computer sorted out!

Unfortunately I know too much about the things to leave it to an expert. The heap of junk crashed as I was reinstalling Windows. When I tried another reinstall it just wasn’t right. So I formatted my “C” drive and did a fresh install. Anyway I won’t bore you any more. Suffice to say reinstalling everything from scratch took what felt like forever!

Actually I probably will bore you over the next while.

As you may have noticed I have become even more obsessed with waterfalls than usual. It has been miserable wet weather down here for weeks which hasn’t stopped me getting out and about in the bush photographing waterfalls. And as this is my blog I am going to inflict them on my poor readers for a while longer.

I promised last time I would post piccies I took on our way home from my birthday paella feast.

So here we go. On the way back from Gippsland I had to turn off to catch some piccies of the Toorongo river. Long term readers might remember I shot them with my old camera a year or two ago. But as I was passing nearby I had to have a go with my new gear.

On the way up the valley I had to stop and capture this old Toyota that died in a farmer’s paddock. It now sits moldering by the beautiful Toorongo River.

Further up the valley I left the car to walk to the falls. As seems to be usual down here it was raining again.

Deb, never as crazy as me, chose to sit in the car and knit while I braved the weather.

I paused to capture these shots of the river cascading through the forest. Then I pushed on to the falls.

By then it was late and almost dark so the piccies aren’t quite what I want.

I don’t usually spend hours photo-shopping my pics by the way.

What you see is usually pretty much what I take off camera. The only thing I often adjust is light levels in my raw images.

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.