Tales of the Subaru - Northbound 2019 - Dead Trees & Dust

I normally feel immense joy when “I return again to New England’s hills” if I may borrow a line from my favourite Mike McClennan song of the day.  But not this time, I felt great sadness instead.

Driving from Walcha to Armidale was a taste of the apocalypse some twisted christo-fascists hope to hasten so that Jesus will return and sort out the environmental, geo-political and social chaos that's being created by their egocentric adherence to the Gospel of Wealth.

The land was parched, dead trees and dust galore, and willy-willies too.  Cattle were thin and sheep were strung out along lines of feed which had been laid out for them but there can't be much money left to buy more and the dams are dry or nearly dry anyway.

Thunderbolts Way - Walcha

But let's back up to Day 1 and Bucketts Way which I always thought was named for somebody called Buckett much like the revered but never actually seen Bucket from Sea Change.  Not so though.  The name is derived from buccan or something similar which is a word the traditional owners, the Biripai and Worimi people, used for big rocks and there are some absolute beauties along Bucketts Way.

We overnighted at the classic and highly recommended Bucketts Way Motel in Gloucester (be sure to ask for an upstairs ‘rock view’ room; we like 14) and just south of there is where the current flush of coastal green stops.  From Gloucester on up to Thunderbolts Way was a bit dry.  Once the road reached the top of the escarpment and the farm country on the tableland it’s dry as and back we go to the opening few paragraphs.

Armidale is something of a spiritual home for me.  It's where I spent four extremely happy undergraduate years living in college and it's also where I did my external postgrad work.  I looked forward to residential schools and still feel the need to go back regularly just to be there.

Lunch at the beautiful old country gentleman’s residence, Booloominbah kicked of my return.  ‘Bool’ was given to the University of Sydney in the 1930s by the White family so that a rural university college might be established, the first of its kind in Australia.  The New England University College grew into its own in 1954 which coincidentally enough was the year of my birth.  It became the independent University of New England and in more recent years expansion has meant that all university’s teaching and residential functions as well as all but the highest level of  administration have been removed from Booloominbah and it's been returned to its former glory.

Booloominbah - University of New England

I was absolutely delighted to find a large Booloominbah snow dome with autumn leaves in the campus store and was even more delighted when the woman on the checkout gave me a 20% student discount.  A stroll through the Faculty of Arts completed my pilgrimage and we were off back into town.

We had dinner with Shara and Tom that night, a must do each visit, and lunch with Sheree next day.  Sheree and I are old mates from Drummond College days and hadn't seen one another for 40 years until we reconnected last year and it felt like just a couple of months.

Shara

Sheree & Glenn

People aside, the highlight if the visit was a morning spent at the New England Regional Art Museum viewing their latest exhibition from the Howard Hinton Collection.  It was a generous display featuring some of the best works from a collection of a thousand pieces.

The Hinton Collection used to hang on the walls of the now defunct Armidale Teachers' College and when I did the methods part of my Dip Ed there in 1977 they were literally everywhere, some hung in the most inappropriate places right in full sun.  And there was absolutely no security.  You could have walked out with a Dobell or a Streeton up your jumper and I've no doubt that happened.

The college was eventually absorbed by the university and under the terms of Hinton's will should Armidale Teachers' College ever cease to be the Collection was to go to the City of Armidale which has also technically ceased to exist.  The compromise was to establish the New England Regional Art Museum.

Pieces of the collection on display at the moment include works by Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton, William Dobell, Margaret Preston, Rupert Bunny, Hans Heysen, Elioth Gruner, Albert Namatjira, Norman Lindsay, Lloyd Rees and many other fine Australian artists.  It was a truly magic morning!

A small part of the Hinton Collection

Two nights is never long enough in Armidale but we had places to go so it was northward up the New England Highway with my traditional piddle stop at Glen Innes where we're spotted a bric-a-brac shop that might just have contained a worthy piece of green Depression Glass like in Walcha and again in Uralla.  And sure enough it did but the real find was a bit further along at Deepwater where I scored a one pound green butter box.  I started out collecting Depression Glass butter boxes 30+ years ago on a visit to New Zealand but the find in the Yorkshire village of Cawthorne distracted me into bowls.  

The chap in the Deepwater bric-a-brac shop was amazing.  The town is just a spot on the map and he looked like a very weathered version of Owen from Vicar of Dibley.  We were met by his old dog, clearly blind in one eye, who also greeted another bloke but he'd pulled up right out front so that done the dog walked over and peed on his back wheel then lay down again.

But back to Owen whose voice had the same resonance as his Dibley namesake...

He knew the history of green glass and what a joy it was to listen to the man.  It appears manganese oxide was used to give the glass clarity but this came from Germany back in the day and was difficult to obtain during the Depression so they added other oxides to create colour and thereby compensate for clarity.  Green glass has iron oxide in it or uranium oxide if it's the glow-in-the-dark kind.   Clear glass with manganese in it will eventually turn various shades of purple if left in the sun and that's exactly what's happened to a bowl a friend recently bought me from an op shop.  All fascinating stuff and a very interesting man.  And chatting with interesting people is what always makes a trip.  We have encountered quite a few along the way.  The old chap in the junk shop in Uralla being the stuff of dinner parties - so engaging and funny as well.

On we went to Tenterfield past smoldering trees on either side of the road that were well inside the town’s 50km/h zone.  They lost a number of houses and businesses and it put a dent in the Annual Peter Allen Festival but every good performer knows the show must go on so with water bombing helicopters buzzing overhead they were busy preparing the park in the centre of town for the Peter Allen luncheon dance as good countryfolk do.

Tenterfield, NSW

Things were a bit dire across the border near Stanhope and hour or so later when we spotted fire jumping the road about 400m ahead.  At that point there was no need to be told to turn back so I threw DeDe into a tight U-turn and we buggered off quick!  It seemed wise to follow a couple of cars with Queensland plates on the assumption that they knew where they were going and they did.  A bit of zigzagging and a short while later we emerged on the other side of the fire and were once again en route to Caloundra.

We checked into level 9 of the Gemini Resort, Golden Beach late that afternoon following a very long drive from Armidale and were instantly happy is pigs in shit.  Gemini is right on Pumicestone Passage and the north-east view from apartment 73 is absolutely flawless.  It looks straight over the channel and across the narrow northern tip of Bribie Island to the ocean beyond as well as up the channel to Caloundra, the passage out to sea and the ocean beaches.  And the view floods into both the living room and the bedroom.  It's an apartment I could grow old in, or at least older, and you won't often hear me say that!

Sunrise from Level 9 at the Gemini Resort

Kim, Annette and I first discovered the Gemini Resort when we “gunned the heap north” during the old spring school holidays in 1986 and fell in love with the place.  On our way up we assumed the names of characters from the ABC’s wonderful radio play ‘Brunswick Heads Revisited’ which was something Drooghead wasn't entirely happy about but when we overnighted with her parents Sir Reg and Lady Glenys at the Casa del Reg on the south side of Coffs Harbour everything fell perfectly into place and thus became set in stone.

And how we did love a “teensy weensy pineapple daiquiri” or just about anything alcoholic that year and the following year when we ventured north again.  When Peter and I decided to come up in 2018 to visit lovely Aunty Joan who had moved from her home on the Gold Coast to a facility on the southern end of Bribie Island I thought “Why not?” and we were delighted.  The place has been meticulously maintained and just as I suspected, the view is even better from the South Tower which I booked last year and this.  So the outlook is better but the alcohol consumption doesn't even rate a mention as, with any degree of luck and good management, is what happens as we age.

Golden Beach Tucker Tip #1

Next day was swims in the channel, the huge superbly landscaped pool and a couple of rounds in the spa pool.  I'm no fan of sitting around in hot water but the water jets did my sciatica a power of good after our long drive.  A much anticipated Vietnamee dinner at nearby Miss Hoian finished off a perfect day.  Their green papaya salad had been on my mind since our previous visit and didn't disappoint.

Fully refreshed we headed south next morning to visit Aunty Joan who was looking fabulous.  She is Peter’s father Keith’s sister, the youngest in the family.  They were very close and it's not difficult to see one in the other. 

Now I've been into an aged care facility of two and I have a very critical eye and nose but I couldn't find fault with Bribie Cove at Boongaree.  It’s spacious and spotless and the staff are extremely caring.  Aunty Joan is a huge hit with them and it's not difficult to see why.

We met son Peter and daughter-in-law Mandy for lunch at the same seafood cafe as last year then went back to their house to see Roxy the dog from whom all future dogs should be cloned, she's a treasure.  And Peter and Mandy can come and do home renovations for me any time they like.  They have a great sense of style which they execute with perfect finish.

Mandy. Aunty Joan, Peter T, Peter B & Roxy

“Crickey!”  I must say I never was much of a Steve Irwin fan and entirely understood where that sting ray was coming from so have tended to avoid Australia Zoo on previous visits but urged on by the recommendation of Uncle Russell in faraway Melbourne we ventured forth next day and once therein we were mightily impressed.  It's well laid out and whilst their collection of animals is not extensive they are extremely well kept and clearly loved.

I've always been partial to lemurs, I don't like monkeys but our cousins the lemurs are much more benign creatures.  At Australia Zoo they free-range on an island and interact with visitors at will as do their wonderfully informative keepers who clearly love their charges as does Tiger Boy Terry who romps with his young charge for several hours each day much to everyone's delight, especially the tiger's.

Lemur Brothers

Golden Beach Tucker Tip #2

So it's a big thumbs up for Australia Zoo but a thumbs down for Dilon’s Kitchen Indian restaurant at Golden Beach.  We enjoyed our meal there last year and while this year's visit wasn't bad the 12 hours of squirts I suffered next day each smelt suspiciously of prawn moli.  My long ago ex’s mother used to make a lovely moli and I just had to have one, didn't I!  Stay with the Vietnamee!

It was with no small degree of regret that we packed up DeDe and set off south after our 5th night at the Gemini.  But never mind, we still had two days of holiday to go and that day was another chance to catch up with Aunty Joan on or way to Ballina but what is it with bloody Queensland and their motorways?  They're as slow at a wet week.  The one down from the Sunshine Coast was bad but from Brisbane to the NSW border was automotive purgatory!    When traffic wasn't crawling because of roadworks or some other merging road it was just crawling for the sake of crawling.  We were ever so glad to see the “Welcome to Queensland - Penalty for keeping rabbits exceeds $44,000” sign in the rear view mirror!

Glenn, Aunty Joan & Peter

I share my father's middle name.  Neville was born in Nimbin just shy of 50 years prior to the Aquarius Festival so my grandparents named him Richmond after the nearby river.  Some 50 years on weed smoking hippy parents probably would have gone with River instead.

On the way south we overnighted at Ballina near the mouth of the Richmond and it's the third time I've stayed in this town.  The first was in 1963 in a fairly ordinary riverside motel two blocks from where we stayed this time around.  I was 7 and I remember it had a large treacherous swimming enclosure that projected out into the river.  That was fine by me though but my mother stuck quite close which was reasonable because that's where we met Barry who was either a paedophile or was suffering post-traumatic stress disorder from WWII - possibly both.  Barry took an immediate shine to me and Mum didn't take her eyes off either of us.  It's interesting what sticks in your mind.

As chance would have it Peter and I stayed in that very same motel, and near enough the same room, 50 years later but only because every room on the North Coast was booked solid for Splendor in the Grass at nearby Byron Bay.  The swimming enclosure had been filled in (probably illegally) expanding the area of the motel by a good 25% and Barry was well gone but nothing else had changed.  The decor, the smell - all bad.  The only time we've ever left a hotel earlier was in Iceland where we had a 4.00am check-in at Keflavik Airport.

This time we stayed in a suite at the new Ramada Hotel with views over my namesake, perfectly pleasant furnishings, no smell and no Barry.

Our view of the Richmond River at Ballina

Ballina Tucker Tip #1

Sonnie’s Thai which is right on the main drag smack in the middle of town is friendly, unpretentious and good.  Since it was a Friday night and I'd had a long drive we ordered take away which we enjoyed on the balcony of our suite overlooking the river - perfect!

We were surprised by all the motorway construction south of Ballina.  Some serious money is going into the new road, much of which is elevated on land bridges where it traverses the Big River Country.  But for now the highway still passes through little riverside towns with sugar mills and bric-a-brac shops that have the odd bit of green glass although they now have less than before because we scored a few more worthy pieces and met some more interesting people.

I can't drive the Pacific Highway without a stop in Port Macquarie to visit my friend Noelene Bailey who was the mother of my late great mate Dave.  He left the building 30 years ago when he kissed a concrete mixer on his way to school early one morning to coach his netball team.  Dave was always a shit driver who very nearly killed us both north of Grafton in 1976.  Given that and other near misses, the news of Dave’s death came as a shock but no great surprise, to me at least; it was both to poor Noelene.

We managed a little shopping excursion and morning tea out last year but not so this time around.  She wasn't even up to a short shuffle to the retirement village cafe but we spent a few happy hours together all the same.  Then on we went, no more stops, no more green glass, nothing until we got home to the Heights-of-Hornsby and our Girls who were delighted to see us again and wanted to know what we'd brought them.  Thank goodness we saved the leftover coconut rice from the previous evening’s Thai or we'd never have heard the end of it.

Our view of the Hastings River at Port Macquarie