Sweet Wayfaring

A few weeks ago at church friends mentioned the Daffodil Festival was on at Rydal.  Walking home I noticed it was a lovely sunny day, and while the grass needed cutting at home I quickly decided it could wait.  We jumped in the car and went on a Sunday drive, at the same time taking the chance to reactivate the 100 towns project before the year runs out. To learn more about Rydal and see its daffodils visit  Rydal at 100 Towns.

We were in Canberra during the week so went for a quick walk around Floriade.  Here you go, just one shot. Tomorrow I am going to start posting more of the 100 Towns.  The year is fast coming to a close and I've got 44 left to go if I'm going to make my target for the year.

No holiday is complete without at least one big thing. As we approached the mountains the traffic began to crawl.  We sighed thinking it was an accident or the interminable road works blocking the road but as we neared the power station at Wallerawang the source of the problem was turning into the side road.  It was one of those big mining/power station things  ... remember the one we saw at Miles.  Well I kid you not, this one had even more wheels, five trucks pulling it and three trucks pushing!  I grabbed the shot as we sped past, free from the traffic jam at last. There is a much bigger bit of it outside the frame of this shot. That is the end of this journey. I hope you have enjoyed the trip ... we did.

As we near the end of our journey the hills and valleys return.  To me it is like the face of the land is crinkling into a welcome home smile.

This was the view from the window on the last evening in our little caravan home.  We're at Mudgee and very lucky to get a spot.  It was the weekend of the small farm field days which we had forgotten about until we discovered the first caravan park was full.  It would have been a quagmire out at the event because rain was beating down.

I can't believe it.  We been miles and miles and I haven't shown you a single abandoned house on the trip ... had better fix that up.  Here you go.  Somewhere after Binnaway and before Gulgong where we went to the bakery for lunch.

I had never heard of Binnaway until Ray sent in a Royal from the town.  So I just had to go down the track leading to there to see if for myself.  This road has some beaut towns to explore and they are not far from home so we will do a weekend back out this way sometime soon.

This is the view from the lookout.  There is so much more to do in this area, we will be back.  But on this day we must move on.

We took the short walk to White Gums look out. Actually there was a diversity of trees before you get to these gums.

This is the view from the camp ground. We was a really quick pop in to see what is was all about.  We will come back one day and visit properly ... good news there is mobile coverage and powered sites so we will be able to work and visit at the same time.

I've been trying for years to get Ian to go to the Warrumbungles near Coonabarabran but it never seemed to eventuate.  So being the navigator on this trip I found we just had to take the slight detour into Coonabarabran where we camped the night.  The morning started cold, wet and cloudy. I feared we had missed out again but we headed out that way just in case and to my joy the cloud lifted.

Royal Hotel, Tenterfield Royal Hotel Armidale Royal Hotel Coonabarabran A few more for the collection but I have already been beaten to the one at Armidale and Coonabarabran by Gordon and Ray. Mark tells me I missed one at Gyra.   And I have been remiss in not posting some sent in by Ray.

Even though was are still many hundreds of kilometres away there is a sense that we are now homeward bound, so we are moving more quickly, less meandering.  This is the road into Tenterfield.

Oh it's nice.  We are moving away from the busy coast and back inland to the quieter pastoral country.

This one has to rank as about the least attractive Royal to date. You can see more photos of buildings in this town over at Clarence Valley Today.   In fact, I often felt I was wandering familiar places in this part of the world because I have visited them via Mark's blog. BTW, sorry for the break in transmission.  The blog has been posting on autopilot for the past couple of weeks because I have been very busy and I didn't realise it was out of shots until today.

From Gympie we moved on through Brisbane to visit more relatives then on down the coast a little way  before turning back inland.  The cities and coastline are too busy for me, I can't even begin to see photographs there.  I much prefer the quieter rural inland. The crops are very different around here -- sugar cane, pineapples, bananas, macadamia nuts.  This is a field of sugar cane.

The visit to the seaside was just a day trip from Gympie where we spent the weekend with family members.  Gympie is a very hilly town.  A town with a long history of gold mining. Apparently floods earlier in the year nearly reached the awning of this Royal Hotel.

It's so different from where we have been.  What a feast for the eyes.  Rainbow Beach.

We've reached the coast!  Somewhere around Tin Can Bay.

We pushed on from Wondai towards Gympie and the coast.  As we were passing through Murgon we spotted the gaudiest Royal Hotel thus far.    Murgon is actually another rather attractive town.

Before we leave Wondai I thought it would be nice to show you some of the old Queensland houses.  It is a classic Queensland country town.

When they harvest maize they leave the stalks standing.  I don't remember it being like this in the past but then again I never used to look at such things very hard before I became a Sweet Wayfaring photographer.  I think they make a nice photo.

I would have loved to have shown you the peanut crops.  They look very attractive with green plants in carefully contoured red soil fields.  But the crop is harvested in the autumn so just bare fields at the moment.

More silos but these are not grain silos.  These are for peanuts -- in Kingaroy peanuts and navy beans are the big crops.  Navy beans are the ones in tinned baked beans.

Remembering that it was my Dad's 98th birthday the next day (if he were still alive) I changed my plans and paid a brief visit to the old town and my parents graves.  They chose to be in the lawn cemetery rather than among the stone monuments where my great grandparents, great aunts and great uncles are buried. Their rationale was that there would be nothing for the family to maintain since none of us live in the area. And the council is keeping it neat and tidy. It was nice to see the town, which is much bigger and busier due to mining and surprising to not find the 100 year old timber church where 4 generations of my family faithfully worshipped. It has vanished.  I wonder where it went. Participating in Taphophile Tragics hosted by Julie.

Leaving Miles we roll on through the Darling Downs and into the South Burnett.  This is the region  of my birth and childhood and suddenly the landscape seemed too familiar to photograph. We chose not to go to my old home town and camped for a few days at Wondai instead. They have a nice timber heritage museum.  I feel the link with my heritage, my grandfather and father cut timber to supplement farm income and granddad had a bullock team.  When I was a kid, as in much of this region timber was big in our town but slowly dwindled.

This power station just outside Miles is not just pretty it's special -- apparently the word's first combined-cycle power station entirely fired by coal seam gas.