Some towns of NSW's Central West

Wheat silo mural at Weethalle. (Mural courtesy of Melbourne artist Heesco Khosnaran)

West Wyalong. Something rather special about this town's feng shui. I liked it.

Forbes, just after a bit of rain. (Not nearly enough rain, of course.)

More Forbes. These were substantial and prosperous cities once.

Parkes.

The city's namesake, Sir Henry Parkes was one of the founders of Australia. He was a poet and radical self-taught political activist from the Coventry/Birmingham area of England. His poetic skills and masterful speeches made him Premier of NSW five times, and he devoted much of his career to the cause of Australian nationhood.

Orange. Very trendy place to visit. Great wines, great lifestyle, great everything,they say. Pity it's almost run out of water. Good luck, Orange.











Bathurst. Fine old city this one. In fact it was one of Australia's first inland settlements.








These days Bathurst is especially famous for its Mt Panorama motor racing circuit, and its two annual big racing events in February and October.  For most of the year, the circuit is a public road, and you're free to drive around it yourself, so long as you don't exceed the 60km/hr speed limit!

Hay & hay, and the worst ever drought (but don't ever mention climate change)

We came back through inland NSW after our Adelaide trip, and the town of Hay presented itself once again as a convenient overnight stop.

The trucks were coming through by the minute, full of hay from Victoria, bound for the drought-stricken regions around here, and to the north, the east, and the west.
 

Most of SE Australia is in drought. It's bad. It's the worst drought since European settlement at least. Businesses are going broke. The mighty Murrumbidgee River is almost totally dry.


Our pathetic federal government is pretending to care, splashing around rather small sums of money as 'drought relief'. They somehow can't bring themselves to articulate the words 'climate change'.

Couldn't be anything to do with that, surely? If it was, they'd have to do something about it, wouldn't they? What would their coal industry benefactors think of that?

I read yesterday that even in Sydney the soil is 1000mm in rainfall deficit, and that's more than a year's average precipitation gone missing. Out west it's a lot more serious still.

World's oldest

It's a long and dusty road to Lake Mungo, but for me it was very much a highlight of my recent road trip. I'd felt drawn to the place ever since the 1974 discovery of the perhaps 60,000 year old fossilised Mungo Man. The slightly younger Mungo Woman had been discovered there in 1969.

So this is the site of the oldest known human civilisation. Ritualistic cremations were involved.




Australia's oldest fossilised human footprints are there too, and you can compare them against your own, if you choose to. They date to 20,000 years ago.

Lake Mungo is in the far west of NSW, about 100km north east of Mildura and north west of  Balranald. It's in the Mungo National Park, and is part of the Willandra Lakes World Heritage region.

Most of the archeological finds come from the shores of the now dry lake. If you book onto a guided tour, you can progress beyond the boardwalk and information signs.















There's a 70km loop everyone can do though, which takes you to several more lookouts and points of interest.

Back to the Visitor Centre, and the world's oldest civilisation thing. I was rather taken by the innovative way they portrayed the time span. Every person on the big wall chart represents ten generations.

Hallett Cove: geologists' delight

An Adelaide sightseeing site that I'd only heard about recently is Hallett Cove, 20km or so down the coast. At the Hallett Cove Conservation Park you get to see several hundred million years of geological history laid out before you, and all nicely explained. I'm not a geologist, but I'm happy to learn, and enjoyed the visit. The best known feature, the Sugarloaf, looks like a funny little volcano. It isn't. Here's a bit of better informed commentary: Geology info

You can get there by train either via Hallett Cove station or Hallett Cove Beach station. What else do visitors do around there? You could take inspiration from the mural at Hallett Cove Beach.

Poh-faced Jamface and the Adelaide Farmers Market

Adelaide seems to have got itself a convenient and comfortable train service since I was last there, and the Glenelg tram has been well renovated too. What's more, transport is free for oldies outside of peak hours, so we were able to get around rather well on our recent Sunday excursion there.


First stop was Adelaide Farmers Market, at the Showgrounds in Wayville ( more here ). One of the attractions there was Jamface, the gourmet food stall run by Poh Ling Yeow, the Malaysian-born runner-up in the first Australian Masterchef series in 2009. One of our party was keen to sample the very fine sweets she makes and serves there. See more on Poh and Jamface here: Jamface











They were indeed delicious. And they sort of survived being carried around for the day, though there was some contention about that!

McLaren Vale - Australia's best

One of the things you do in South Australia of course, is tour the vineyards. And the very best wine region (and maybe most conveniently located) is McLaren Vale, just south of Adelaide.

We had a great day out there. And I tasted what I perceived to be some of the best wines in the world.

Our host Charles even found us a bespoke brewery cafe for lunch, where he could taste the beers. (He doesn't drink wine.)














And it's not just about tasting the products. At d'Arenberg's winery you get to experience the d'Arenberg Cube, genuine Salvador Dali sculptures, and an amazing old-fashioned amusement arcade.

The Coorong

I know the Coorong district mostly because of Storm Boy, the excellent film from 1976 about the young boy and Mr Percival, his pelican friend. There's been a recent film remake this year, though some reviewers wondered why. The Coorong is also the name of the long lake stretching down from the mouth of the River Murray.

Anyway, we passed by there on our way to Adelaide. It's looking rather dry, as is a lot of south eastern Australia. After all, much of the water that was supposed to flow down to here has been stolen by irrigators upstream. The drought has taken most of the rest, I suspect.





At Meningie we stopped for a toilet break, and I read about South Australia's 'only genuine bushranger', as I think he was described, John Francis Peggotty, the Birdman of the Coorong. He rode about on an ostrich, no less!

It actually is a rather great ocean road!

Just about everyone does the Great Ocean Road at some time, along Victoria's coastline. Especially the grey nomads, the Asian package tourists, and the Melbournian day trippers. It's much talked about, and I'd wondered at times if it was perhaps a little overblown.

That wasn't my experience though. It truly is a rather good trip. At least, it was the other week, out of season and away from school holiday time or weekends. It might get a little busy then.

For a start, there are the free range koalas, and some over-friendly native birds.

Then there's that truly stunning scenery to the east and west of Port Campbell. Like the Twelve Apostles. It seems the number of apostles is a little rubbery. Wikipedia, (here: Twelve Apostles Wikipedia ) tells us that from the main viewpoint you see seven - there were eight but one collapsed. (Or was it nine but one collapsed, except that might have been one of the nearby Three Sisters - the accounts vary).

And there's the remaining part of London Bridge. The connecting bit collapsed in 1990 (see: London Arch Wikipedia) and it became London Arch instead. That would have been a sight. It surely was quite an experience for the two tourists who were stranded and rescued by helicopter!

On the road again

We did a road trip to Adelaide and back last week. There via Victoria and the Great Ocean Road, back through the NSW outback.

It's great to get out there now and again, to experience some of the familiar sights, and explore new spots too.









So it was lunch at the Dog-on-the-Tuckerbox, afternoon tea at the Ettamogah Pub (where else?)

Then we overnighted at Nagambie, a pleasant little town in north-central Victoria which we'd never heard of. It's the birthplace, we discovered, of the famous racehorse Black Caviar, who was born there.

Next day I got to visit two scenic areas I'd long been curious about: Lerderderg Gorge and the You Yangs. The latter are visible as a small group of pointy hills from all over Melbourne. Great places to spend more time at.



 






On via world-famous surf beach, Bells Beach. Not much surf happening this day though. 

It's the Great Ocean Road now, and it truly is a very scenic drive. Somewhere here, near Lorne, I'd made my only other trip down here. Over 40 years ago I'd hitch-hiked down from Melbourne, and got a ride from a couple of young chaps who were cheerfully imbibing from beer bottles as they drove. A lot of this went on in those days. The car hit a post on the edge of a cliff. We limped into Lorne, I crossed the road and hitched straight back.

This time I was doing the driving and it all went a bit more smoothly.

Under Lorne Pier we discovered an enormous seal frolicking and fishing for our entertainment.