Sweet Wayfaring

Yesterday's brown butterfly is one of the brilliant blue butterflies when it opens its wings! I've run out of material so perhaps this is a good time for me to take a blog break while I figure out what I will do with my blogs in the New Year.

I spotted this butterfly at the Nerada tea plantation.

I remember that I forgot to post a story about the Nerada tea plantation on the Atherton Tableland.   I wondered how the tea was harvested.  The only image in my mind of tea harvesting was of women on the slopes of India hand picking the crop.  The neat hedge-like clip of these fields assured me this was not the case here. The photo below of the video display shows how it's done. The informational display says the best tea comes from the top shoots.  Hand pluckers can pick 40 or 50 kilos a day.  With shears a plucker can do about 150 kilos a day.  A Japanese developed hand shearer can do about 300 kilos a day per person but it is hard to control the depth of the cut. The machine above is Australian developed and can do 45 tonnes in a single shift, of tea as good as hand plucking.

I have a couple of supplementary shots from the trip.  Here is our round up of some of the birds we spotted.

And so we reached the end of our long journey.  In our garden winter flowering camellias were in bloom, the first blossom was whitening the boughs of the pear trees and the air was fragrant with jonquil, daphne and wattle.  Ah home!! Thank you for following along with me over so many months which actually took 9 weeks but much longer to report.  It has been a delight to relive one of the best journeys I have ever travelled.

Wanting to eek out the holiday just a little longer we spent a couple of days at our rural retreat at Clandulla -- the little wattle and warm log fire warmed our hearts.

Too soon we were passing by our favourite lake outside Mudgee. It was looking a little dull and cold but I do love this countryside.

Royal Hotel, Musswellbrook It was so chilly my camera mirror fogged up but by the time we reached Merriwa it had cleared.  It was surprising to find two Royals quite close to home that I had not previously collected. Royal Hotel, Merriwa

Musswellbrook seemed intent on reminding us we were heading back into the chill.

With reluctance we turn our vehicle inland, knowing this leads to the end of our journey.  But there are still some delights like the lush countryside of the Hunter Valley to pass through.

Well we have clearly left the Grey Nomads behind.  Even though we mountain folk were feeling the weather was still quite warm, it seems most of the rest of the population doesn't think so. We are at a caravan park near Forster.  I was seduced by the claim that it had absolute beach frontage but I don't consider a fence and forest of trees between me and the beach to be true to that claim.  Perhaps as compensation down by the water we were rewarded by seeing a pod of five or six dolphins at play (didn't have my camera with me)

I know it is nearly summer now but when we were ending this trip it was still winter and the sight of bare trees had me feeling a little worried.

I was surprised to have not seen many wattles in flower up north, their varieties must flower at a different time of year.  They cheer cold winter days down south.

We are driving past Melaleuca forests which I found quite lovely.

I took more shots as we walked back from the beach.  The light was really lovely by now.

Beach Road is one of the roads in the caravan park we were staying at.  The beach always beckons. x

The Big Banana at Coffs Harbour was one of the first of Australia's big things and these days the attraction is a little worn but we called in anyway. It was the weekend again, I will take you down the Road that Beckoned tomorrow.

I was too busy making visits to relatives to take photos at Gympie, Sunshine Coast, Brisbane and Gold Coast but here we are on the road again, leaving Queensland and back in New South Wales.  We decided to stick to the coast on the Pacific Highway for our trip home to stay warm just a little longer -- the inland can be very cold at this time of year.  We haven't driven the Pacific Highway for years and were pleasantly surprised with the improvements in the road. I took this shot as we drove across the bridge into Grafton.  The Northern Rivers district is quite a lovely part of the world, I plan to one day to spend more time here.

It's pretty nice country around here, especially where the Glass House Mountains appear. But we are on the downward run, not lingering because we are now back in South East Queensland with lots of family visits to make.  We are also in familiar territory and I don't have the same sense of discovery. The driver is intent on our destination so even made me grab the Royal Hotel at Tiaro from the car window instead of stopping. Royal Hotel, Tiaro