Hallow'een flyers

I thought it was rather apt on this day that in the UK we used to imagine witches flying through the night sky to some magical place where they would make spells (I am not sure if this is typical of people in the UK but in our household it was!) that I would show you a little video of some very spooky individuals.
These are not blood suckers and they are not magical in any way. These are the fruit bats of the Gold Coast. Often known as Flying Foxes these fruit eating flying mammals can strip a mango tree of ripe fruit in one night and make a mess of most of the almost ripe fruit so they are not exactly welcomed in the home garden nor in the orchards.
Unfortunately for the commercial fruit growers the flying foxes are protected and cannot be shot or trapped or hurt in any way. It is as if the Government values the existance of this pest over the existance of the people who rely on the farmer's produce! One inventive person found that the fruit bats hate the sound of bagpipes and played recorded pipe music through the night - much to the delight of his in-earshot neighbours!
Since returning home from our trip I have noticed that the fruit bats have taken to flying over our home on their way to their feeding grounds. I set the camera up on the back veranda and watched them as long as there was light to see. I took 15 minutes of non stop fly-past and the camera stopped long before the bats stopped flying over.
Here is a little of what I saw.

There is also quite a lot of sound in the early evening as the corella's make a fuss about where to go for the night. The bats are silent as they fly over, they make their noises once they are in the fruit trees. Cicada beetle are the noise of summer - which is fast approaching and the sound of the cars as people hurry home from work.
There is another sound that can be heard. I am not sure if it is someone with a "bird gun" that fires at regular intervals in an attempt to keep the flying foxes away or if it is someone actually taking pot shots.
Enjoy the flying foxes and the evening sounds!
AJ

Birdsound

I was wondering how to share the sound of the bellbirds when I hit on the idea of combining the recording with the video I took of the bower birds. I have replaced our comments about the bird's behaviour with the recording I made of the bellbirds.

The camera I used is a mini DV (tape) camera that shoots in 4:3 and originally in PAL format. Quality is lost when converting to flash video NTSC but the sound is there!
AJ

Closer to home

Our final day of driving in our son's four wheel drive (which we had never needed to put into four wheel drive) was through lush countryside that made me reach for the camera at every twist in the road. Every turn seemed to reveal yet another beautiful landscape. Of course the shots that I tried to take out of the car window ended up being thrown away – the vegetation close to the road was moving at such a speed that it spoiled the rest of the picture. When you look out of a car window your eyes eliminate this blur – but the camera is not so selective.

Fortunately my pleas to stop fell on receptive ears and I have a few “goodies”, but only where there was a gravel shoulder to pull over onto! This shot over the bales of hay was only because there was such a patch of gravel!

Our route took us over what is known as “the Range” and almost at the apex is a picnic spot that is down a narrow track into the dense bush. The wonderful chime that is the sound of the Bellbird could be heard through the closed windows as we drove down to a clearing in which there were picnic tables.

For the first time on this trip I dragged out the video camera – not to take video but to record the sound. Its a pity I don't know how to give you a sample in this blog. Maybe one day I will find out how to do it!

We were joined at our picnic table by some free-loaders. First a female then another and finally a male bird. They are Satin Bower Birds. The male and the female are very different to each other in appearance.

The male is black and his satin black feathers are almost iridescent blue when the light catches them. The eyes are blue but we noticed that both male and female's eyes could look mauve when the sun shone on them.

The female could hardly be called drab with her highly patterned coat of feathers and her blue eyes, but she is quite a contrast to the single colour of her male partner.

In breeding time the male woos his bride-to-be with a bower of twigs (like an archway of twigs) with the ground under the bower and the opening to it decorated with all things blue – blue berries, blue bottle tops, blue caps from ball point pens, etc., and if the female is impressed she will enter the bower.

Back in the car we continued up and over the Range and eased over to let impatient drivers race past us – even though the speed limit was 70kph.

This shot was taken through the windscreen since there was no way we could stop on this steep road. The trees and the cliff are so dramatically different to the emerald green of the farming area we had just left.

Over the top and down the other side it is even steeper and heavy vehicle have to take great care. We caught up with the impatient drivers who had overtaken us, they had become trapped behind laden trucks negotiating the decline at about 40kph.

My shot is to show two things – the traffic on this steep road and the emergency ramp that runs off to the side should brakes fail. The speedy drivers are in this shot too!

There are many things that I could show you from this trip but I will only include one picture that I took in a small town called Kalbar.

We called in to visit friends today who moved from Kalbar ten years ago. It was partly nostalgia that took us off the main road into the little town but there are some restored homes and businesses that saw their birth well over a hundred years ago – and I love taking photographs of attractive buildings!

I hope that you have enjoyed reading about our travels and seeing a few of my photographs.

AJ

Last leg of our outback trip

Our journey is almost over and once more we are into the wetter fringe of this huge continent. Well, not quite. We are in Warwick which is normally much drier than we are seeing it at the moment but is does have a higher rainfall than Bourke and beyond. As we drove closer to Warwick the wheat crops were thicker and more even and the cattle were fat and healthy and far more numerous to the acre. Inland the measurements are acres to beast and it could be several acres to one cow so any kangaroos, emus, goats or camels are competing for what feed there is out there. Things are very different this year. It is so good to have seen it so productive. Back to here.

I had to stop driving to hop out and take a shot of the magenta that painted many of the paddocks. This is not Paterson's curse, the taller blue flowers we had seen further inland, but a lower and daintier plant altogether.

I will have to look up the name but it resembles a linaria except for the leaves.

Warwick dates back to the early nineteenth century so has a few beautiful old buildings. Many of the shops use the original facade above their street level shop fronts. The buildings behind the facades were usually very ordinary, corrugated iron was used a lot, so the actual shop will be completely new even though the facade is original and not moved from its first position.

I am sharing something a little different from old buildings. Yes, you can see the old buildings (I have a fascination for the gorgeous hotels that can be found in every town) but take a look at the way the streets are decorated! In front of the Criterion and running the full length of the main shopping street is the most perfect display of roses and not one showing any sign of vandalism. I think that someone must tend the roses often, dead-heading and mulching them. They are a pleasure to behold. When Colin and I first arrived in Warwick I set the GPS (in “places of interest”) to lead us to a rose garden, well it did and the roses there were in a very sorry state and badly neglected, they were a small section of a bigger park and since there was no name plaque and a local we spoke to later knew nothing of a rose garden, this reference in the GPS must be out of date! The roses we saw in the main street made up for our disappointment!

Spotting a shop that specialised in coffee I persuaded my tight-fisted hubby (“You make good coffee”) to treat me to a coffee! But before I could even enter the premises I was brought to a stop and the camera switched on again. Once again the street plantings were eye catching.

The roundabout in the middle of the intersection was all planted with annuals and around the corner of the pavement that adjoined the coffee shop was planted lavender and roses and a blossoming tree.

We did enjoy our coffee and I purchased 200g of French roasted coffee beans to take home with us – so I can make Colin a good coffee!

Before I end our travel stories here is an outback picture to set you guessing.

There are two Australian creatures shown here in foot-prints. Can you see them both? Unfortunately the wheels of our Nissan and the trailer ran over some of the prints. It looks as if both creatures were travelling at speed – maybe a vehicle was coming up behind them and they moved along the road before veering off into the bush.

AJ

Back o Bourke

When someone wants to express that they have travelled deep into the outback of Australia they say they have been “back o Bourke”. Bourke is quite a long way west – so I think we have been quite a bit back o Bourke in the past two weeks!
Today we visited Bourke – which has a most striking mural to welcome drivers entering the town.

Two “swaggies” (the name given to Depression days wandering tramps who would do odd jobs in exchange for food) with their packs (matilda's) on their shoulders striding off into the great desert away from civilization (through the farm gate).

Last year a special exhibition display was opened called “Back o Bourke”

We parked the car and paid our dues to wander through the three buildings housing the displays. In the first was an audio visual display which was very well done, then through an interesting dryland garden into the next building in which there were more audio visuals but no audio! We had been told there were headphones but we couldn't find any! So that part of the display fell a bit flat – instead I read out the bush poetry that was all around the walls and entertained Colin with my own audio! (He couldn't be bothered reading the poems for himself).

Outside again and into another building. This had all sorts of things to read up on the walls. We watched a rather clever presentation of a paddle-steamer making its way up the Darling River and listened to the commentary that informed the listeners of how goods were loaded and many other things too. Finally we followed the path that lead to the exit and found ourselves in the cafe! We nearly bought an ice-cream but realised in time that it would be melted into liquid the moment we stepped outside. When we did get out we found we had half a kilometer to walk to get to where the car was parked! Fancy the tour ending up so far away from where you start! We told ourselves that the walk would “do us good”!

Unfortunately we were unable to partake in a riverboat ride – there is a paddle-steamer that runs every afternoon. The river is so high that the paddle-steamer cannot fit under the cables and power lines that criss-cross the river! They do not think the paddle-steamer will be able to negotiate the river until well into November. We seem to be encountering many things on this trip that we cannot do!

To make up for that disappointment we took a short detour off the road and followed a sign to see some “carved trees”. We had no idea what these would be and curiosity drew us on. When we came up to a sign saying “road closed” our hearts dropped but we turned down a track and found that we had come the right way after all.

I did not know about the aborigines carving trees for their ceremonies so to read the boards describing where they were found and what they had been used for was a delight. These relics of a lost civilization are here in the middle of no-where and we were fortunate enough to be able to see them.

The carvings are quite masterful and nothing like the primitive art we have seen on the walls of cliffs and overhangs, nor like the painting that the aborigines are creating these days.

For me this was a real highlight of today.

Finally a photograph to show you the reason I wanted to head "out west".

The wildflowers after the rains - and the bush and the greenery are something like we may not see for many years to come. Australia is a land of extremes and most of the time the interior of this country is barren of plants except for the hardiest of trees and salt bush plants. This year the country looks amazing. The yellow in this picture is from millions of wild mustard flowers. They are very common but at the moment look stunning - back in our farming days our house cow once had a wonderful feed of mustard flowers and we were unable to drink her milk for quite a while!

AJ

Precious metals.

Today we are at Cobar, we called in on the way through to the centre but it was pouring with rain and we saw nothing. We gave ourselves two nights so that we would have a full day to check out the place and the weather was kind to us this time around.
Cobar is a town that has grown and evaporated a couple of times thanks to the volatile nature of the demand for copper and gold. At the moment it is a fairly prosperous little town and is riding on the mining boom once again.

Our explorations took us first to a large gold mine that initially looks like an open cut mine but it is a huge hole in the ground with a road that allows an easy gradient for the heavy machinery that drives into the hole at the bottom (Yellow arrow points to the entrance) The seam that contains the gold can be seen where the white arrows indicate where old mines have been exposed, I am assuming that they were hand dug and had buckets that were hauled up through a shaft to take the ore to the surface.

At a park opposite the Information Office is a memorial to the miners who lost their lives in mining accidents in Cobar and this imposing life-size miner working at an ore face shows how work was done in the past. Computerized machinery does the hard work these days.

There must have been plenty of gold in “them thar hills” because an information board had a photograph of one of the gold stampers. I have been to other gold mining towns where they have had ten stampers or fewer so fifty is a huge quantity! The ore was smashed into dust by the stampers and the water would wash the dust over a bed that was filled with mercury. Gold is heavier than crushed rock and sinks into the mercury while the water washes the rock off and into a pit. At the end of the crushing the mercury is scraped off the plates and put into a crucible and evaporated (?) over heat to release the gold. (If I have this wrong, please let me know!)

A visit to a working copper mine was fascinating, we were taken in a small bus around the outside of the working area and could only take our photos from behind the windows of the bus. I couldn't help being amazed at the store of huge tyres in a shed dedicated to this task. We were told that these tyres are hard to come by so when they are available a big order is made so that they are on hand for when they are needed.

Apart from lots of facts and figures giving quantities and and percentages (which went in one ear and out the other) we were shown the complex arrangement of tanks and pipes that are part of the method of separating/refining the copper from the ore. It was all very impressive.

Even more impressive is the number of pubs in Cobar! These miners are obviously a thirsty lot! The smart Great Western Hotel is named after one of the Gold Mines. I couldn't resist taking a photograph of it – it has the longest iron lacework veranda I have seen.

AJ

Wilcannia, gone but not quite forgotten

When we drove through Wilcannia on the way to Broken Hill I was determined to stop there on the way back home and have a better look at the place. Wilcannia was once a busy inland port on the River Darling. I will quote from one of the sign boards by the river.

“By 1880 Wilcannia had 3,000 people and 13 hotels . . . . In 1887, 218 steamers (they would have been paddle-steamers) unloaded 36,000 tons of stores and shipped wool and other produce away weighing 26,000 tons.”

I am not sure of the population of Wilcannia today but it cannot be very great judging by the number of derelict homes and shops.

There are some very grand buildings. The Post Office caught my attention along with the adjoining house with the iron lacework on the veranda. Both are empty. In fact most of the sandstone buildings, which are in good order, are empty. But unlike deserted buildings in a city these are not vandalised and the glass is still intact in the windows. Very dirty and impossible to see through but intact! When were were at Peterborough and we told people we were going to Wilcannia we were warned not to stop there for the night as it was not a safe town to stay in. Having spent a couple of hours on foot exploring the town with my camera – on my own, I think that the reputation of the town is worse than the actuality of the situation. I did see a few aborigines but they seemed to be at neat homes with gardens filled with flowers. There were a few other tourists that stopped after seeing me wandering around and they took their cameras out and followed my lead. Colin found a traveller to chat to and was not even aware of my disappearance!

Wilcannia is on the River Darling and the old iron bridge with the centre lift is still there but is no longer in use – the road now goes over a boring (but safe) concrete bridge that runs alongside the old centre lift bridge. The centre needed to be raised to allow the steamers to pass under it. It has been a long time since there has been enough water in the river for such large steamers to run on. This year has brought the water back to the rivers.

We searched for evidence of the port or wharf but could only find a couple of metal structures that could have been used to winch heavy stuff from the bank to the steamers and vice versa. From that old photo I copied it looks as if the boats merely pulled into the bank to be loaded and unloaded.

A walk down the street on the other side of the highway gave me a surprise, I found several pieces of artwork displayed not far from the pavement. There was nothing to indicate who had made them or when they had been commissioned or bought and they had some extra art work added to them in the form of painted “tags” but that somehow added to the character of the pieces!

I am glad that we stopped here for a couple of hours, I would have been disappointed if we had shot straight through again!
AJ