WARNER'S BAY AND HOME

Thursday August 17, 2012:

After a good and healthy breakfast we were soon on our way south. Heading out from Kendall we had to re-join the Pacific Highway for a while before turning off to take the old coast road. There was some good looking country back there and a number of small towns that had shrivelled after being bye-passed by the highway. Some seemed to have clung on to life with the annual transfusions from holidaymakers, but others seemed nothing more than a small collection of sad looking buildings.

We finally had to swing back onto the highway and into the urban area around Newcastle. It was a bit strange to be driving with traffic lights and traffic after a couple of days in the bush. Tomtom led us to our destination, the unit where Rab’s brother Graham and wife Molly now live in Warner’s Bay. It is a very comfortable spot in a seniors’ complex. I’m very fond of Molly, but she and Graham are very bossy people and clearly have taken over the administration of the complex despite their not having been there as long as some of the other residents.

Molly, Graham and Rab, Rab and me (behaving)

We had a good chat and a pretty substantial lunch of lasagne and then headed across to our motel which was  at the opposite arm of the bay. The receptionist seemed to be a little young and somewhat untrained as were the rest of the workers in reception. Turned out that the motel had changed hands only two weeks earlier and the new, and very pleasant, owner was training up his crew, supervising painting etc.  As he said, they’d invested in new pillows, mattresses and linen, so we enjoyed very crisp sheets when we got to bed later that night – and an excellent shower the next morning. 

But before we hit the sack, we went back to Molly and Graham for more reminiscing and a light evening meal. A pleasant day, even if I had, under strict orders, to bite my tongue and not argue with any of Graham’s pontificating. I almost broke away when he was telling me about how bad the racial problems were in the UK – in response to a comment I made about the census disclosing a total population of about 54 million with less than 5 million coming from outside UK or Europe. He blustered “If you had seen what I have seen….”  To which I responded unwisely that he could have no idea where we had been on our frequent visits to Britain or what we had seen. Then I realised I was on a slippery slope downward and forbore to respond to his following comments. Discretion being the better part of valour if familial relationships are to be maintained.

Friday August 18, 2012:

Molly wanted to show us the area around Nelson’s Bay where they had first lived when they moved from Sydney after Graham had retired, but before that she wanted to show us two other spots that she thought would be of interest to us.

The first was the garden shop which had a substantial shop selling all manner of knick knacks which might be used in the garden as well as plants, seedlings and everything you might need. There was also a very nice café, so Molly’s idea wa that we could look around – or Rab could anyway – and then we could have a bite to eat before heading off. Amongst the delights in the shop Rab spotted the Three Wise Rabbits – Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil – which she had seen some years before but had been unable to make a decision to buy – and then regretted. This is not an unusual experience. Many is the time when, as we lift off from some exotic place, Rab says “Maybe I should have bought that ……..[fill in item]”. She still couldn’t say “I’ll have those, having to consider where they might fit into our (rather small) residence which already has many souvenir items, despite many having been abandoned in recent years.  So we had breakfast instead – I had an excellent muesli with fresh yoghurt and Rab had what had become a signature breakfast -  fried egg and crispy bacon on Turkish bread.

Next stop was a wholesale food shop up the road – Bibina Foods. Now that might not sound very exciting, especially to someone not particularly interested in food and eating. To the two of us it was like going in to Ali Baba’s cave. The first thing that caught my eye was a refrigerated grotto filled to the brim with exotic lollies/sweets/candy from all over the world. There were dozens of American lines (although no Cow’s Tales) some of which we knew, some of which were new. What to choose, bearing in mind luggage consideration? Choosing a small selection I moved out into the main arena and was even more amazed by the range of foodstuffs to suit any and all manner of cuisines. Most were in huge jars for catering, and many were items we’d never seen before. What an experience! If only we lived in Warner’s Bay.

On we went after our mastodon shopping – to my amusement, Molly drove and I sat in the front while brother and sister shared the back seat. They have a history of mutual antipathy and although both have mellowed over the years, I thought it might be like putting a couple of Kilkenny cats in a bag. But all was well and both retained their composure for a very happy day. Nelson’s Bay is a very pretty area and must have been even better before the development which drove Molly and Graham out. That and the crowds of people from Newcastle who flock there in summer and school holidays. There is a series of bays, each with white sands and very good looking sea. We stopped at one pier which had a restaurant which had a fine reputation, but which looked distinctly run down, so maybe there has been a change of owners. We spotted some pelicans coming in for a free feed on seafood scraps – and also a rather curious warning in some prawns in a refrigerated area. If you couldn’t use them for bait or to feed aquatic animals, should we be eating them? We went on to another restaurant with a great view and less great service, which lit Graham’s fuse. He’s not happy about staff who do not meet his standards. The meal was OK, but not memorable – hence the reason I cannot recall it. Rab says we all had salads – not very exciting. But it was warm and sunny and I had no complaints.

We headed for home and another snack meal after the large lunch while the two ladies dug further into their combined and phenomenal memories of days gone by in Durban.

Saturday August 19, 2012:

Today was set aside for a deal of mastodon shopping by Rab and Molly. Probably as well because there was a howling gale blowing, so there would be shelter in the shopping centre.

White horses were galloping across the Bay as we left the motel with the tall eucalypts creaking in the gale. I’m always wary of those trees which have been known to drop very large branches under the weight of heavy winds.  Didn’t happen this time and we got across to Molly and Graham for a light breakfast with them. I ran into a potential problem area with Graham when I commented on the fact that the Bay was so stormy. “It’s not a bay!”, he said, “It’s a lake.” I forbore to point out that there are hundreds of bays on the Great Lakes – or that the name of his suburb was named Warner’s Bay not Warner’s Lake. I was quite proud of that.

I drove the shoppers off to the shopping centre, leaving Graham at home, and we found a comfortable seat in one of the levels where I was able to sit and relax, catching up on several of my magazine and newspapers on my iPad. It was rather pleasant to sit and do nothing until the ladies came back to pick me up and carry me off to the  food court. We all chose variants of Asian food – I had some pretty good green curry prawns – but when I volunteered to go back to the counter to pick up the orders, I didn’t realise that the food was served on pretty large, substantial and very heavy china plates.

We dropped Molly off at home and headed back to the motel to pack and for a Nana Nap before going back for supper and to watch rugby on the television. The Australian Wallabies were playing the New Zealand All Blacks. World #2 playing #1 for the Bledisloe Cup, an annual competition between the two countries which the All Blacks have won for about the last ten years. They won again and although there were some good plays during the game, I have been converted to Footy – Australian Rules Football – which is a much more exciting game.

Sunday August 20, 2012:

Hear, See, Speak No Evil

We had agreed to meet Molly and Graham at the garden centre for breakfast and Rab finally made the plunge and bought her rabbits, who now sit at home on the TV cabinet (There was room in the house after all!). A last bacon and egg on Turkish bread – crispy bacon, of course and we were on our way with fond farewells and a promise from Molly that she would come down and see us when she wasn’t involved in golf competitions.

We dropped the car off in good time but had a couple of hours to kill at what is a pretty small airport. Part of the time was just people watching – an amazing bunch of extraordinarily dressed folk. Made me realise that the people at Eumundi were dressed in what passes for normal in these parts.

Nothing too exciting about the flight home, packed in like sardines. Nick was there to pick us up but for some reason chose a route home that led us into a traffic jam of working day proportions, where we sat for the best part of a half hour.

Good to be home, as always. Your own bed is always so pleasant. All that was missing was the boys – and we picked them up the next morning, joyous as ever to see us.

KENDALL

Wednesday August 16, 2012:

The view from our room across the valley was a splendid way to start the day. We cruised back into town for breakfast and were pleasantly surprised by the number of cafes and by the look of the town, which we could see more clearly in full daylight. The morning sun was warm so we sat outside and watched the passing show as we waited for our Canadian waitron to bring us breakfast.  I was lining up to take a shot of Rab when a passing Kiwi offered to take one of us together, which was kind of her. She snipped off the top of my cap, but, as you’ll see, we were a pretty happy, if somewhat weather-beaten, couple.

There seemed to be an unusually large section of somewhat outrageously dressed, long haired, tattooed, pierced people about. All was explained when we found that a jazz festival was to be held in town over the weekend. Later in the day Gary (with whom we spent the night) said that they had considered buying in Bellingen or the valley, but felt that there were too many hippies there. We had thought that the term ‘hippy’ had  disappeared from the language some years ago, but apparently not in country Australia.

The tucker was good despite being organic and while we ate we had a look at some of the material Rab had picked up from the Information Centre the evening before. It seemed that there was a pleasant drive looping through hills and swamps down to cross the highway and go on to the old coastal road. There was a warning that there was a stretch of unpaved road and that for most of the drive a speed of 60 kph would be appropriate. We might have been put off had we had a standard sedan, but felt our four wheel drive XTrail would cope – as it did. The dirt road had been graded fairly recently and was in good condition. The slow speed recommended was due to the narrowness of the road and the frequent bends. We thought the road’s name – Boggy Creek Road – was pretty apt. Driving past the swamps was a first  for us – we’d never seen eucalyptus trees growing in standing water. They do seem to be very versatile plants, growing in such diverse conditions from the swampy tropics to the high alps where the snow gums look really out of place.

We drove the Pacific Highway for  two or three kilometres before turning off to Nambucca Heads, a very popular holiday destination but pretty quiet at this time of the year. You can see why people with families would flock here. Nice beach, great river with, it is said, good fishing. We stopped off for a stretch of the legs and a cup of coffee. Strolling along the walkway next to the river we saw an old boy with his line in the water with a somewhat disconsolate look on his face. Nearby a toddler was enthusiastically lobbing slices of bread into the water. Immediately the water would roil as dozens of fish – some quite large – squabbled over the spoils. Rab asked the fisherman if he had caught anything. “Not for the past two weeks,” he said, with a sad smile. Those who fish must surely be the most optimistic people in the world.

Our overnight stop was with good friends Bernadette and Gary Henderson. They were in Wagga Wagga when Matt had his accident and were so good in giving us and him such great care and attention as we worked our way through that awful time. Gary had finally retired and had decided to move back to what is termed the New England part of Australia, since he and Bernadette came from that part of the country. They had chosen Kendall as their base because it ticked off so many of their requirements – and was hippy free.

Our old version of Kendall didn’t show the development where their house is since that was done after the map in the GPS was produced. So Tom simply lead us on the main road to a position opposite where the house was, but couldn’t tell us how to get there. My sharp eyed navigator spotted a likely route and before too long we were drawing up at the Henderson home to a warm welcome from the two of them. The house is comfortably large – it will certainly accommodate son Troy and his family for holidays – but Gary’s pride and joy is what he terms a ‘shed’. In Australian terminology a ‘shed’ is usually a fairly small structure at the bottom of the garden where menfolk can retreat to and perhaps have a couple of beers with their pals while watching sport on the old TV set when they are not working on the latest ‘Honey Do List’.  Gary’s shed has six roller doors giving him access to his very large workshop and enough room to store his boat, his two vintage MGs and to work on the 1942 model US Army Jeep he inherited from his father.

He had just finalised the purchase of a new boat to replace the little tinny that had given him good service for many years, but was now a bit on the small side for the sea fishing he had in mind, launching from the nearby ramp at Laurieton. He had only just realised that the boat on trailer might not clear the roller  door and after some frantic measurements and negotiations he had arranged for the windscreen to be lowered by a couple of inches to clear it. So far so good, but what about the length? Did the length in the catalogue include the engine – in which case the boat would fit. Or did  it not – in which case the craft wouldn’t fit – unless a hole was knocked in the back wall. The matter was unresolved by the time we left….

We were sitting round chatting with a beer when Gary suddenly suggested we should see the sunset and the view from the Lookout over Laurieton. No sooner said than done and we were hurtling through the gloaming – Gary always had a bit of a lead foot, developed over years of driving over largely unpoliced country roads. We rocketed up to the peak above the town and although we missed the actual sunset by about five minutes. The view was still pretty good though – water and sunlight make a good pairing.

We drove on down to the beach which looked as good as most Australian beaches are – and as potentially dangerous. I could see a couple of areas where there seemed to be a pretty strong rip. Gary confirmed that the recommended end of the bay for safe swimming was well away from there. The beach is about 15 minutes from the house, so that’s pretty convenient. We drove back through the town which seemed to have all the basic amenities. The one aspect of the situation which would concern Rab is that the nearest hospital is about 40 km away.

We had a hearty meal and although the Henderson’s spare bed is a little softer than ours is, we snuggled up and snoozed the night away.

BELLINGEN

Tuesday August 15, 2012: It was another lovely day when we woke, a little later than we do at home. I managed to get the luggage down the long staircase and off we went around the corner to town as Chris had convinced Rab that there were some excellent shops while Marj had urged us to have breakfast at a little place - Swizz.

I sat in the car in the warm morning sun for the statutory hour that the parking sign allowed me while Rab went on her mastodon shopping expedition. After the hour was up I moved the car across the road into the shade and headed for breakfast. Excellent meal – poached eggs and crispy bacon on a Turkish bread roll with a nice big cold glass of orange juice. A good start to the day.

Since it was such a glorious day and we were in no hurry we took a stroll along the board walk just watching a boy fishing with his Dad under the watchful eye of a pelican and his father as the river flowed by. It seems a very nice spot , Ballina, although I guess it may not be quite so peaceful in school holidays, especially over Christmas. Marj grew up here, working on her father’s oyster farm, but we didn’t have a chance to get around to see the farm, which is no longer in the family, or to eat any oysters as they were out of season. Marj’s father was named Bob and she is well known around town as his daughter, so she says - guess she’d be known a Bobsdotter in Iceland and some other parts of Scandinavia.

There wasn’t a coastal road from Ballina heading south, so we thought we’d avoid the Pacific Highway by heading inland through Lismore, Casino, Grafton and Dorrigo heading for Bellingen which looked a good place to stop for the night. Easy day’s drive of about 250 km, allowing time for stops. Lismore was one of the first country towns I visited after we arrived in Australia back in 1987. walking down the main street I spotted some notices about twelve or fifteen meter up on electricity poles. Too high to read, I asked my companion what they were for. He told me they showed the height of the major floods some years back. Many Australian towns are built on the flood plains of rivers and  discover, on a fairly regular basis why the are called flood plains. Lismore has been inundated several times since then.

The countryside, which was basically rolling green hills as we drove inland  started changing after Casino, getting steeper and more dramatic and we were soon into the various State Forests and Nature Reserves which are a feature of so much of the Australian countryside. We paused at Grafton to pick up something for lunch. We had decided to just stop at one of the rest areas alongside the road for a picnic lunch as we didn’t need a meal after our satisfying breakfast. Since it was the sixteenth anniversary of my prostate cancer diagnosis we thought we’d push the boat out a bit and chose to have smoked salmon on crispbread, washed down with ginger beer in lieu of champagne!! Unfortunately the weather put the kibosh on our simple plan – a very cold wind was blowing making any roadside picnic uncomfortable. So we sat in the car and had our lunch there.

We were into very hilly country after Grafton. The road curved and rose higher and higher and we glimpsed some lovely vistas. Unfortunately it was a single lane road with no stopping places and we had to grab views when we could. Reminded me a bit of a memorable drive through the back roads through the Ozarks where we had similar problems. The descent to Bellingen which is at the bottom of a steep valley made for some interesting driving and we were sorry we couldn’t stop at two lovely waterfalls right next to the road. There were parking areas there, but it was getting late and light was fading. Dusk and dawn are times when kangaroos and other animals ted to move about a fair bit and we didn’t want to bump into any of those. A big kangaroo does a deal of damage to a car.

We cruised into Bellingen, a lovely little town with very few modern buildings and many older ones. We popped into the Information booth just before it closed and they gave us a couple of suggestions apart from the ones we’d picked up off the Internet. Rab liked the sound of one – Rivendell – which was in town. I was a bit wary of a place named after a place in Lord of the Rings, and so it proved. Very dark and gloomy, according to Rab after her inspection. So we went with our first choice –resort style accommodation just outside town. A bit more expensive, but very comfortable. There was a restaurant there and we thought we’d eat ‘in house’, but the restaurant was closed, possibly because it seemed we were the only guests at that time although two or three more came in later.

So we headed downtown for the Federal Hotel on the advice of the receptionist. Lovely old buildings with a noisy pub in the front on the street and a quieter bistro and takeaway at the back, down a little lane if you couldn’t face working your way through the bar. The special was Schooner and Steak for $13.50. Schooner being a measure of beer – about three quarter of a pint – at least in some of the States in Australia. This measure is called a pint in South Australia, where a schooner is the size of what is called a pot in New South Wales. Of course in Northern Territory a schooner is called a handle and a pot is a seven. Confused? I still am. I just point to a glass in a bar when I order a beer and say “I’ll have one that size.” It’s all explained here  Lights, Heavies, Mids and SchoonersExplained

The beer was good – well it was Victorian beer after all, Carlton Middie – and rhe steaks were surprisingly tender and pretty large too. Good sauces with the meat – Rab had pepper and I had mushroom – with a decent serve of chips/fries and a salad. Very good value.

We headed back up the pleasantly named Waterfall Highway and slept like logs. Nothing like a bit of touring and a good meal to do that.

BRISBANE AND BALLINA

Monday August 14, 2012: We headed out after an excellent breakfast of the wonderfully fresh fruit – pink grapefruit today as well as oranges and mandarins – and some good muesli. Both the Dunns and the Loxtons say they are planning trips to Melbourne in the next 12 months or so. We’ve told them they would be very welcome to stay with us.

Although we usually travel on back roads, rather than highways, we were making a couple of stops today so headed down the Bruce Highway, parts of which were excellent, but other areas needed a good deal of work.

Our first stop was at Bribie Island to see Jan Crichton, widow of Ron who died three years ago from prostate cancer. The Crichtons are really poor communicators –never even kept up the Christmas cards – but they always seemed to be happy to see us. Maybe they were just very polite people!! Jan looked good and although we only had an hour or so for her and a cup of coffee, the ladies compressed a good deal of news into that time. On our way back to the highway – Bribie Island is about 30 km off the main road -  Tom, our GPS, led us astray and we landed up at the wrong end of the island, well away from the bridge back to civilization. Fortunately I had built a little spare time into our schedule and we were soon back on track and on time.

Having found our way to Vulture Street in Brisbane, we managed to get to the vicinity of the restaurant in South Bank Parklands where we had agreed to met Peter and Therese -  Decks Seafood & Steak Restaurant. But we couldn’t see the place anywhere, although Tom told us we had arrived. There were students wandering about all over the place so we asked a couple of them for directions. Unfortunately most of them represented the influx we have had over the past decade of students from Asia and their grasp of the English language was tenuous. We finally hit pay dirt with a couple of Aussies who pointed out where we could park and how to get to the eatery.

We hadn’t seen Peter since he had a stroke five years ago, but, as he said there has been very little residual damage and he seemed to be enjoying life as much as he always has.  Therese also had a number of health issues relating to her immune system, but seemed to have managed to overcome them pretty well after a good deal of effort.

Peter and Therese - and our guest

 It was very pleasant sitting in the warm sun watching the traffic on the river and the bank. Two years ago when the river was in flood we would have been under several feet of water, but everything has been cleaned up and repaired since then.   We had a good laugh when a rustling in the bush behind Therese turned out to be a frill necked lizard or an iguana – none of us were sure just which it was, but it was about two foot nose to tail – climbing steadily up the bush to get a better view. He didn’t bother us and we just ignored him so we heard nothing more. Rab and I chose a light meal - salt and pepper calamari for her and a delicious grilled seafood skewer for me. Just what we needed. P and T each had a seafood platter and we were glad we hadn’t made that choice. Although it was advertised as including grilled salmon, that was a piece about the size of my thumb while the rest of the very large platter consisted of crumbed and fried fish and a large quantity of chips – hardly good value at $44 a platter.  

All too soon we were on our way with promises of meeting up again – up Vulture Street and on to the Pacific Highway heading for our overnight stop at Ballina.

Rab had booked us in at the Ballina Manor Boutique Hotel, a lovely old building that had started life as a boarding school for girls. We got there at about 17.15 as the sun was beginning to set and whilst the hotel was quaint, it had no lift/elevator and our room was on the first floor (second floor in US terms). The staircase was steep and the cases were quite heavy by the time I struggled to the top. Quaint is one thing: practical is another! The room was very pleasantly furnished in antique style and we were very happy there as it was very comfortable. One aspect of guest comfort that we had never come across before in any of our travels was a Pillow Menu where you could choose from a variety of pillows. We’re not too fussy and the existing pillows were fine for us, but we thought it was a nice touch.

We had arranged to meet up with Chris and Marj, a couple who we had met on our White Winter Tour in 2010 and who live in Ballina. It was lovely seeing them again and although the hotel promised fine dining, there was no lounge or bar where we could sit and chat, so we went on down to the RSL Club. For non-Australians, RSL is an acronym for Returned Servicemen’s League and these clubs are a feature of all the small towns across Australia (and of course in the cities). In many of the States they were the only venues where one armed bandits/slot machines/fruit machines were allowed, so they tend to provide a pleasant venue and reasonably priced food and drink, subsidised by the gamblers who get a deal of pleasure from putting their hard earned cash into the machines.

Ballina Manor and the Pillow Menu

The Ballina RSL was no exception to the general rule and the food was excellent and very reasonable. I had a pork hock which was wonderful. We had a very good evening with the girls and had a good laugh on the way home when I stopped to take a shot of the post office. The spotlight on the building made it look – to me at least – like an enormous ogre towering over the town. Maybe it was my imagination – it couldn’t have been the demon drink as I certainly never drink and drive in Australia.

A good day.

MONTVILLE

Sunday August 13, 2012. Slept well – all the shopping and sightseeing must be doing me good and woke to another beautiful but cold day.  We seemed to be living the Queensland motto “Beautiful one day: perfect the next.”

Wayne sleeps in on Sundays – which is to say he doesn’t get up before 5.00 a.m. to start his farming duties. So we sat and chatted and ate some of the best fruit I’ve had for ages. The citrus in particular, picked from their small orchard was sweet and juicy. I progressed from grapefruit to orange to mandarin/tangerine/naartjie – just what to call this fruit depends on which country you’re in! After a while Wayne fired up the barbecue to cook up bacon and eggs, a Sunday treat. It was very pleasant standing with the cook on the veranda with the pool sparkling in the morning sun. The smoky odour of the cooking seemed to draw out several of the Dunn brood who had spent the night. There were some we hadn’t seen for many years. It is always strange to see a little girl of ten or eleven now a married woman with a child of her own.

Breakfast over, we had a stroll around the grounds, admiring Adrian’s work and ending up under the huge Morton Bay fig tree with it’s banyan-like canopy which shelters the pavilion where patrons of their retreat will meditate and be massaged under the watchful eye of a statute of a Hindu goddess who looked suspiciously like Kali to me. I thought she was a dark and violent deity; a figure of annihilation, which seemed singularly inappropriate in an area given over to contemplation and peaceful thought, but found that recent devotional movements largely conceive her as a benevolent mother goddess.

As we stood chatting under the fig tree I spotted a mob of kangaroos loafing in the long grass of one of the paddocks. It is amusing the way they lie around most of the day, often on their elbows, to all intents and purposes like a bunch of Romans lounging at their feasts.

Back at the house we boarded one of Wayne’s larger four-wheel drives for a tour of the estate. He runs about 35 head of cattle and showed us the various paddocks, dams and so on as well as the nursery where Adrian grew the plants for his business. As canny in business as his father, he found some time ago that property developers tend to scoop all everything off a site when they are building or re-building and just dumping the soil and plants. Adrian goes around picking out the best of the plants and nurses them back to health, thus being able to provide mature plants when he completes a landscaping job. We put up a lovely big male kangaroo who gave us a very dirty look before hopping off into the trees.

I think Wayne was a little disappointed that I politely declined his kind offer for me to have a meeting with the nutritionist who had helped him with some of his health problems. As I said to him I’ve read many books and articles on the subject over the last sixteen years. It seems to me that there is general agreement among the majority of nutritionists on what the core diet should be to which each adds their particular area of expertise. Since they can’t all be right, confusion reigns unless you simply stick to the core issues.

I went off with Rod, another ex-colleague who lives up Noosa way and who had joined us for dinner last night – and spent the night rather than drive. We headed to the car hire to pick up the vehicle we had ordered and which had to be collected before noon because that’s when the office closed. Hey! It was Sunday .and people are entitled to some time off over the weekend. The vehicle was there a Nissan XTrail four wheel drive which went well and which gave us a good view of the road. Wayne and the rest of the party duly turned up and I followed them through the maze of traffic circles that are used in Noosa to control the traffic flow. I think there is only one set of traffic lights, but many, many roundabouts. I find that they tend to be a bit disorientating. Turning left, right or going straight on through an intersection gives me a better ‘feel’ for where I am and where I am going rather than going around and off traffic circles.

We dropped the XTrail off outside Wayne’s office to pick up later and  headed off to Montville which sits in some hilly country about 70 km from Noosa. We drove through some delightful country on the way with everything looking green and healthy – they’ve had good rain up there this year. We whipped past some stands selling pineapples at $1 a piece. Wish we could have picked up a couple. Wayne did pause on the way home at the stands, but by then the stock had gone. Montville turned out to be a very hilly little village with some magnificent views across to the coast. Parking was a problem, although as things turned out, it wasn’t a particularly busy day for the shopkeepers. The town itself was rather like the market at Eumundi, except that all the goods were in shops rather than temporary stands. Wayne was very surprised to see how many shops had closed since they were last there, including a couple of his favourites. We reckoned that much of the statuary scattered around the Dunn estate had come from shops in this area.

Among the places that had closed down was the restaurant where Wayne had proposed that we should have lunch. Again he expressed surprise because he said that it had always seemed to be so popular, but presumably the number of visitors to the area were down – or spending less. We easily found another likely looking restaurant which had a gypsy theme. Rather unusual for Queensland I thought, which isn’t  normally associated with those people. The young staff member who served us – the only one on duty it seemed – was very pleasant, but we waited for the best part of an hour for our food. We weren’t in a hurry, so it didn’t bother us – after all we could talk just as easily sitting around a restaurant table, but I did wonder if the lack of customers was the cause of this hiatus or a response to it.  I had a very satisfying meal - kidneys and bacon on mash. Not sure if that is typical gypsy fare, but Rab’s chicken filled crepe was less satisfactory.

While we were there I got an e-mail on Rab’s new phone from Jesse saying that I had left  on of the chargers at their home so I responded and said we’d pick it up on the way home. Turned out to be the charger for the camera, so I would have been a bit annoyed if I had gone on without that. I wonder why it is not possible to have universal connections for these electronic items that are so much part of our lives these days. I bought a charger at  Gelignite Jack’s for my iPad which is for use with the car’s cigarette lighter, but the iPad rejected it. No doubt there is an Apple appliance that would do the job at a significantly higher cost than Gelignite Jack’s $7.95.

We had a bit of a lie down when we got back to Kamo and then headed down to the clubhouse at Boreen Point on Lake Cootharaba for an evening meal. It was a comfortable down to earth place. The noisy bar and patrons at the back and a pleasant but basic restaurant in the front. Good food, reasonably priced and served promptly. There were many old photographs around the room of fisherman with enormous fish or catches of fish and also a series showing the pub being moved from it’s original location. Sawn in half and moved in pieces and re-assembled. I know that is old hat for people in countries where structures are made of wood, but coming from a country like South Africa where everything is brick or stone built, it is still an amazing sight for us.

An excellent day all round.