What I Miss

Not necessarily because of the Plague, though I'm sure it plays a part, but also time constraints, scheduling difficulty & just too much other stuff that needs to be done as well

- Playing with other musicians. There's something occasionally magical, but at least generally soul-satisfying about playing music in a room with other people. Even with the covers band, which this week, I decided to leave, playing songs that I generally wouldn't choose to play, I felt happy & a sporadic sense of wonder at how easy some of these songs were to play, how good they could sound when it's not the original band playing them &, personally, how little of my playing ability has been lost since playing guitar took a 2nd, or even 3rd seat to daily work & photographic pursuit

I haven't been able to sync a day with my other music project, playing, developing & wrangling my own music, some of which was written in the early 90s & has never found a proper vehicle. My cohort for this lives in F.F North-Western Sydney (Fucking Far!!) & it takes almost 90 minutes to travel there - which I don't mind doing, as it's a wonderful location on the city outskirts, but it does make finding a day & a time difficult, for all the reasons in the first paragraph...

On the plus side, spending time alone in the computer/music/spare room, I've been playing a hand-me-down bass that L-SP was given by someone & building up a few little riffs & pieces, as I always do when playing an unfamiliar instrument, as part of the process of finding out where the notes I want are, I occasionally play some interesting ones that aren't what I was looking for, but sound pretty good anyway... And if I'm the only one in the room, there's nobody to tell me I'm wrong

Mini Roadtrip Part III

Not the place to fill up... besides - no diesel

With the fog & evening closing in as we came down from the tablelands to the Bellinger river, then through Dorrigo National Park, we hit the Pacific Highway just south of Coffs Harbour, ready to stop for the day...L-SP found a place that had the word 'Resort' in its name, but was offering cheap rates, so that would do! It was just outside Coffs Harbour on the southern side & right on the highway - something that didn't really register with us 'til we got to the room, which was nice enough, but wow... the sound of trucks & semi-trailers thundering past was enough to make you think the balcony could double as a bus stop. Never mind, I'm sure it will get quieter at night, by the time we get back from dinner...

In keeping with a somewhat recent tradition, we decided to find the archetypal, inevitable country town Chinese restaurant. I don't know how this got started, or even why we keep it up, as the results are inevitably disappointing. Maybe it's the thrill of dancing with dysentery... which is a little unfair, except on the place we once visited in Moruya a couple of years ago...

After the also traditional argument with Google Maps, we found our chosen Chinese & were relieved to find that at least one of the chefs hailed from China & that the menu was as comprehensively clichéd as anticipated. Not a great meal, but not terrible either & a long way from the worst we've had. Back to the Resort for some evening TV, some phone calls & bed. And no, the trucks were not any quieter... until between about 2-4am, by my reckoning...

The next day was to be our last on the road, allowing a day at home for some actual time off, before returning to work... The plan: Breakfast at the Big Banana, then some coastal sightseeing on the way back to Sydney, pick up Bella from her lodgings & home

On the way to the Big Banana, we spotted the Clog Barn, on the other side of the road & earmarked it for a visit after breakfast, as it looked like a bit of kitschy fun. The Big Banana is something of a national institution & is one of the earliest examples of Australia's fascination with building 'Big' things to make the tourists stop in your town & hopefully spend some money at the gift shop, after posing for photos. This has been the way of things for as long as I can remember - long before the word 'selfie' was coined, long before Instagram... so by the time you got back home & had your photos developed, enough time had passed to make you think that stop at the Big Banana/Prawn/Trout/Potato/Oyster/Ned Kelly was a really fun thing & all your friends should definitely go there when they holiday in that direction...

As is the case with most of these 'Big' things - especially one I visited when I was a kid & haven't seen for 40-odd years, I remember it being a lot bigger



The way I remember it, you walked into & through the Banana for what felt like 25 metres, looking at photos of banana plantations & Coffs Harbour town, then emerged, blinking in the sunlight, just in front of the cafeteria. Well, you can still walk though it, but it's more like 2.5 metres...



The cafeteria, at least, seems to be bigger than I remember &, as long as you liked banana with your breakfast - bacon, eggs & banana, banana fritters, eggs bananadict (I think I made that one up, but maybe not) - you're all set...

... to get your food as take-away only, as the dining area was still closed, due to the Plague. Not being a huge fan of bananas & eggs, we decided to head back into town & try elsewhere. Hey, why don't we see if the Clog Barn has a café!! This turned out to be the right decision, as not only did it have a café, but all the breakfast options had no bananas grafted onto them and we could sit at a table & listen to 3 old blokes spouting bullshit about their travels to Asia & bargains they'd found in the classified ads. Never mind them, bring on the breakfast - it was now an hour after the time we'd anticipated eating & L-SP was getting shirty

That done, off into the Clog Barn & out into the Miniature Village outside. This is another Australian tourist tradition... If you don't have the land to build a 'Big' thing, build a miniature thing - everything from mini golf, to Cockington Green in Canberra, the miniature Sydney CBD under the floor in Customs House & now, Little Amsterdam in Coffs Harbour!



I still think they should have had Anne waving from an attic window, as a bunch of German soldiers march past... Too soon??

Southward Ho!!, with the vague plan of investigating as many of the brown 'tourist drive' turn-off signs on the highway as time would allow. Some were okay, some were a bit too far, some were not much more than a 5 minute rest stop for Laura, before belting down the highway again. Nambucca Heads was pretty glorious - see the photo posted a few entries ago... & as we wound our way through the town back to the highway, we followed the river delta, when this vista could be seen at a little truck stop

Pelicans! Reflections!! 2 of my favourite things to photograph...

We soon discovered that the amount of kilometres we still had to cover, in the time we had left in the day, meant no more significant stops if we wanted to reclaim our cat, so other than a late lunch at a well-known fast-food chain, it was pedal to the metal 'til we reached the northern outskirts of Sydney, threaded our way though the afternoon traffic, arrived home with cat in cage & mud not only on tyres, but a lot of other bits of Laura as well

Still looked better than this guy though...

Some new tyres, a coat of paint & some fuel from that place in the first photo & I reckon she's good to go...