The Waiting Man

Up in the Blue Mountains, just to the west of Sydney today. Ostensibly to take 2 guitars up to Adam at Birdwood Guitars for a bit of a once-over & set-up, but also just to squeeze in one last bit of travel before returning to work tomorrow...

More travel diary soon

Narrabri to Lightning Ridge

A lesser travelled day, overall, but it certainly felt like more than just 340 kms

Breakfast at the 2nd local cafe we found, then to a pharmacy for essentials & a lottery agency for some wishful thinking, before heading back out to the Australia Telescope Compact Array about 15 kms out of town. We’ve been there before, but being mild science nerds, it’s always worth the trip. With the sun on the ‘right’ side of the dishes in the morning, it was easier to get shots of the 5 close dishes all together (the 6th is fixed at a point some 5 kms away from the others). A little science reading in the Visitors Centre, then testing out the in-line acoustic dishes, which are set about 50m apart & if you face the dish & speak, the person at the other one can hear you clearly. Be careful what you call your partner - they can hear you!!



And so, on to Lightning Ridge, via whatever we find along the way. We decided to try out Laura’s on-board mapping system again & she directed us down a red dirt road for a few kilometres, before getting her wires crossed & sending us in a couple of circles around a rail siding, before we figured out the way to Walgett ourselves. We got a little ambitious & added in the town of Come By Chance, simply because who can resist a name like that. After a bit (okay, quite a bit) of prevarication on Laura’s part, we found the right way there, thanks, in no small part, to the little town of Burren Junction. Now, I'd never heard of the place, but once upon a time it seems to have been the Grand Central station of Australian travel & freight, if the sign outside town is to be believed... You can get anywhere from there



Funny that Come By Chance isn't mentioned on there, but it certainly helped our bearings. For all its past glory as a transport hub, it's pretty isolated out there & the landscape is an Australian cliché... you know the one



We soon left the black top behind, for some narrow dirt roads & only had one unscheduled stop due to an oncoming road train, who was about the width of the entire road... The driver seemed quite pleased we hadn’t panicked at his approach & had calmly got off the road while he was still about half a kilometre away. We got a wave as he thundered past at some impressive rate of knots, anyway... I'm still not sure how he'd got through the narrow gate we passed a few hundred metres down the road... it still looked intact

Not long after that, we disturbed some small birds by the roadside & unfortunately one of them will never be disturbed again - our windscreen was the shock of his life. L-SP was pretty shocked too - it hit on her side & she had visions of broken glass & a dead bird in her lap. Fortunately, Laura is made of tougher stuff. Well... not so fortunate for the bird, but...

After these encounters, we finally made it to what Laura called ‘Come By Chance Park’ which was a few hundred metres down another dirt road & was indistinguishable from the surrounding scrub & red dirt we’d been driving past for some time. Certainly didn’t look like anyone had been playing football or cricket there for a while... or ever. Either the park didn’t exist, or Laura had no idea where we were. I could see what looked like a small town a few hundred metres away, so abandoning Laura’s navigational conniptions, we found the right road &...




... really needn’t have bothered. The ‘town’ such as it was, was a few old & older buildings in various states of collapse & all seemed to be closed to visitors, whether they’d come by chance, or by dogged determination like we had. Oh well, at least we’d got some dirt on the tyres... windows, interior... & got a whole lot more when some white Toyota thing decided that 85kmh on a dirt road wasn’t fast enough for him & overtook us, leaving us literally in his dust, which totally obscured my view of the road, the side of the road... hell, even the sky!! Everything went white for about 20 seconds & I hit the brakes as we both coughed & swore at the rapidly dwindling shape of the arsehole as he disappeared in the fore-distance

Not long after that, L-SP got her wish of seeing a real Goanna, as it raced across the road in front of us, being chased by an angry magpie. Everybody is scared of Australian snakes, spiders & lizards, but don’t mess with our birds either... especially in nesting season!!

Walgett, when the dust had cleared & we could see the road, seemed a nice little town. Certainly the lady in the Visitors Centre was very helpful & happy, especially when warning us there was rain forecast for the north-western corner of New South Wales, which may put our planned route to Cameron’s Corner in jeopardy. We decided to press on regardless & adapt as we go, hoping we don’t have to. Cameron's Corner is where New South Wales meets both the Queensland & South Australia borders & we just wanted to be able to put a foot into both of those States, so we could say we've been interstate at a time when all the Covid19 restrictions mean that actual interstate travel is, if not actually banned, extremely problematic, as it involves a 2 week quarantine stay in a hotel, at your own expense, before you're allowed to go anywhere

The Corner is not really a major thoroughfare for interstate travel, as the dirt roads preclude most traffic &, if the expected rain hits, the roads will doubtless be closed. It can be an expensive exercise getting bogged out there - especially when the road's officially closed. You are charged $1000 per wheel that needs to be dug out, you pay for any damage you've done to the road & then there's the cost of getting the tow team out to you & the fee for dragging your recalcitrant arse back to the nearest town, which is Tibooburra - about 200 kilometres away. Not something we've budgeted for...

From Walgett, it's only a short trip down the highway to Lightning Ridge - the Opal Capital of Australia & boy, do they like to let you know!! From the moment you hit the 5 kilometre mark outside town, there’s nothing but roadside signs for opal mines, traders & tours. We found the Visitors Centre on the way into town &, again, the staff were friendly & helpful, recommending drive-yourself tours & various places. Given we’re here for 2 nights, it’s a good bet we’ll get to most of them. The drive-yourself tours are named after various coloured car doors. There’s a blue one, a yellow one, a red one... & the green one is the best to do at sunset, so, given it was about 4pm, we thought we’d start there. I’d noticed a sign for a green car door tour on the way into town & wondered what the hell that meant... now I know. It means about 20 minutes on a red dirt road full of ruts & potholes past & through small opal mine ‘claims’ which make the landscape look like a rabbit warren gone into overdrive, or a bit like the eastern end of the South Dakota Badlands, where the prairie dogs have holes everywhere... if the prairie dogs were the size of a young bison



This was our first real encounter with the Red Centre of Australia in quite a few years & it felt good to know we were really out there & a long way from home. It’s a wonderfully liberating feeling

One that is apparently shared by a significant amount of Grey Nomad tourists, who seemed to converge on the end point of the trail, where the sunset view is written to be the best in town. We went from being pretty much alone, to waving away SUVs like the persistent flies all around. Fortunately, the view over the plains & the historic mine sites were quite interesting, even if the more recent addition of a ‘labyrinth’ made of small rocks arranged in concentric circles was not - though it certainly caught the attention of the increasing throng. Sunset, when it arrived, was nice, but not amazing... & certainly not improved by the soundtrack provided by one of the nearby SUVs pumping out an 80s power ballad, nor by the drone launched by another couple, which flew into my shots a couple of times. If there had been a suitable sized rock near to hand...


Back into town & more trouble with Laura’s navigation system. All we wanted was directions to a suitable restaurant. After a few U-turns & confusion, we headed for the town’s Bowling Club. It is something of an Australian country town tradition that, if there is a Bowling Club, it will have a Chinese restaurant in it - even if there's another Chinese restaurant elsewhere in the town. Lightning Ridge's club advertised ‘Lucky’s Brasserie’ which surely couldn’t be the local Chinese joint with a name like that, could it?

Yes. Yes it could... so far, so traditional. But it also did ‘Western Meals’ which were everything from steaks, fish & chips & a mixed grill of sirloin, chicken , bacon & egg, with chips & gravy, which my stomach cried out to

We plan to do the other coloured car door tours tomorrow & may, or may not, wind up down at least 1 opal mine. Who knows??

Kilometres travelled: 340 - though it felt like more...

We are back... a few days earlier than expected

Mostly because one of the road-trip's objectives was to get to Cameron's Corner, which is the point where the border of our State of New South Wales meets those of Queensland & South Australia. We'd planned to just put a foot over each border & boast that we'd been able to go interstate at a time when pretty much nobody can. But the weather put paid to that... 2 big cold & wet fronts swept over north-western NSW & dumped about half a year's worth of average rainfall in a day, flooding a couple of towns out there & rendering the dirt roads to Cameron's Corner utterly impassable. No one can begrudge our dry land a little rain, but jeez... couldn't it have waited just 2 more days?!?!

Anyway, many photos were taken & we kept a daily journal of the trip. By popular demand, or even without it, I'll post one day at a time over the next little while, once I've done some editing, added some stuff & inserted photos at the appropriate points

Have a taste of outback New South Wales at sunset...

A little more photo back-filling before we resume the travelogue...



The bridge near Baker's Creek Falls. Trivia: the rhythm for the Bee Gees song 'Jive Talking' was inspired by the sound cars make when driving over bridges like this... Barry remembered it from his childhood in Queensland



Newell Falls, under the road & down to the Bellinger river



A rare sight these days... but I'd say it's still an essential service in the Outback. Certainly here, in the town of Wollomombi... Love that sky!!

Still to come... The Big Banana!! The Clog Barn!! Pelicans!!!

Before we get to Coffs Harbour, which is where we left off in the actual narrative, some photographic backfilling...



At our first stop... a rickety old timber bridge over an un-named stream, on the way to Baker's Creek Falls. Sure, the bridge was photogenic & I'm sure I'll get 'round to posting its photo, but I can never resist a good sky shot - even with a giant tree in the way!!

From memory, Baker's Creek Falls was where we called it quits all those years ago in OBluV8, as the dirt road was a little too hairy for a low-slung highway cruiser. Despite our Motel lady's assertion that the waterfall roads had all been tarred & buggered, this road was still quite corrugated & pot-holed, with not a hint of bitumen to be seen. Happy Days!!

The Baker's Creek Falls, when you get to the lookout point, are quite a distance away... & a looong way down



A little further along, is Wollomombi Gorge... Wollomombi is an aboriginal word for 'meeting of the waters' - which is apt for this giant hole in the earth where 2 waterfalls meet. Coincidentally, my favourite pub in New South Wales is the Wollombi Tavern, which is just a dialectical(?) difference with the same meaning - where the waters from behind the bar, meet the ones in my digestive tract... Not to be lumped in with the Wollemi Pine, an ancient tree species, meaning 'look around you, keep your eyes open and watch out'... And people say English is a confusing language

It's almost impossible to get your light levels right here - the Gorge is so deep & dark, that even on a rainy day, the light at the top blows everything out... A LOT of PShop remedial work went into this one!! This was the place with the biggest car park & the most amount of picnic tables - 2 of which were overtaken & probably overwhelmed by the hyena family I mentioned yesterday. There was a 2nd walking track that looked like it may have taken us down & closer to the waterfall on the left, but having seen the cackling horde heading that way, we decided to get a decent time jump on them & leave it 'til next time. You always need an excuse to come back, right?

Of course, sometimes, as you're walking back to the car, having done your best to capture the best Nature has to offer & you think you're done with photos, for the next few kilometres, anyway... something else catches your eye

Then it's just a matter of waiting for everyone else in their oversized shiny-sided behemoths to get the hell out of your shot, without driving through the puddle & emptying it

To finish today's photo spam, here's a surprise waterfall... well, it was a surprise to us!

Newell Falls, closer to the Coffs Harbour end of the Way. Completely unheralded & without a really convenient place to stop, we pretty much just pulled into a breakdown bay to get this shot. The Falls continue under the road, via the tunnel you can see at right. I'll post a wider shot, without a car, when I get 'round to it

On a personal note for today... it was one of those days when you wish you had at least 4 job applications in the works, so you could tell your current employer exactly where & exactly how far up, he can stick both his attitude AND his job

Today was, unfortunately, not that day... But it may not be far off

And go... tomorrow morning

The bag is packed, the cameras charged... the cat carrier is ready to take Bella to her boarding house, while L-SP & I hit the road for a couple of days

We're aiming for a country road called the 'Waterfall Way, that runs between Armidale on the NSW central tablelands, to Coffs Harbour on the north coast. The forecast is for rain & cold, so not sure what photos we'll get, but sometimes the journey itself is enough reward...

See you on Monday, or maybe Tuesday

I like to be here, when I can...

We are back after a week-long road trip down to Melbourne & Victoria, then back up through the Snowy Mountains, hereafter named the Smoky Mountains, as there was so much smoke, that the mountains were just shapes in the haze...

Caught up with some friends, didn't catch up with others - don't take it personally, it was always going to be a fairly quick stop in Melbourne & people with new-born kids get priority... - did a lot of walking up & down streets, hills & market aisles, ate well (sometimes very well), but it was always more about the road-trip breaking in Laura & getting her used to the kind of things we make our cars do... flying down freeways, then onto dirt roads, byways & more highways...

Photos from Melbourne are all on Instagram (WaitingMan67), as it was too much trouble & not a little pretentious to be lugging the DSLR around the city. The photographic action really only got going on the 2nd day of the 3 day trip home, when we were looking for a way back to Sydney from Lakes Entrance, on the southern coast of Victoria & everything seemed to be on fire . There certainly seemed to be a ring of fire around Sydney

We found a dirt road that wound its way through the Alpine, then Kosciusko National Parks & brought us to south of Canberra. A real narrow mountain road, with occasionally narrower corners around some significant drop-offs. Thank god it was during the week, not school holidays & there were fires either side of it - which meant we only encountered 2 cars coming the other way & not at any of the brown-trouser times... The fires weren't literally either side of the road, but their smoke made visibility a bit of a challenge sometimes. Some beautiful scenery though, sometimes enhanced by the smoke...

To celebrate L-SP's new camera & a Bank Holiday Long Weekend, I managed to wangle myself an extra day off (today!!) & we hit the road on Saturday for a sunset & sunrise shooting session with the Canon Collective at Tin City - about halfway along Stockton Beach, north of Newcastle (Australia, not the U.K!!) I knew about Stockton Beach, albeit under more sinister circumstances... but had never heard of Tin City before. When L-SP suggested the place, I thought it was what they called the part of Stockton Beach where a couple of old ships had been wrecked & so was quite excited about it. What we found instead, was a collection of corrugated iron huts, shacks & 'houses' that had first been built & occupied in the late 1920s, thanks to the Great Depression. Some of the shacks are still occupied today, by people who don't mind having no phone, no electricity, no sewerage, no internet, no running water, but apparently also don't mind having fish for 3 meals a day & the occasional invasion of photography groups. To be fair, the Canon representative was clear about staying away from the occupied structures, keeping quiet & respecting the area as people's home. To the best of my knowledge, we all did just that



The shacks themselves, while quaint & of some interest in a rural/urban decay kind of way, didn't really grab my attention much & I turned my camera's gaze to both the surrounding sand dunes & the sunset



I should mention that access to Tin City is only either by 4WD & a permit, or by tour arrangement with a company based at Anna Bay, at the north end of the beach. Canon had arranged the latter, so about two dozen of us piled into 4WD 'buses' that set off over the dunes, bumping around so much it felt like you were on a trotting horse & you couldn't get the rhythm right enough to save your coccyx. Once we hit the beach sand for the main part of the drive, things smoothed out enough to un-numb your bum. On the way up on Saturday afternoon, we were lucky enough to see 2 whales breaching in the waters off the beach, as well as a dolphin doing that backwards tail skating they seem to enjoy. No photos... I wasn't quick enough

As sunset became night, we headed back to Anna Bay, marvelling at the rising Milky Way & its clarity, making plans to come back after dinner & try some star-shooting. Unfortunately, it didn't work out too well, as the lights from the nearby carpark blew out the long exposure shots we tried. Never mind - the galaxy's not going anywhere & there are plenty of other locations...

Up early on Sunday for another bone'n'bum rattling ride to Tin City for the sunrise & my god, was it a cold morning!! My fingers hadn't been so numb since Milford Sound in 2011. Wind chill was also a factor, though thankfully, it didn't blow the sand around, so the cameras & tripods didn't get much grit in their works - that can be expensive to fix... More clouds in the sky made for better sky shots, but also meant the dunes didn't light up the way they had at sunset. Still, I love sunrise & sunset shots, so no complaints!!


That's my camera & tripod... I'd walked away to talk to L-SP, then noticed the sunrays coming through, so took out the little point'n'shoot that lives in my pocket...

As the sun climbed past the clouds, the tin shacks & surrounding dunes finally got a burst of colour





One last rattling ride back to Anna Bay, then breakfast with some of the Collective at a nearby café, before we headed south to Sydney... via the Hunter Valley, so not due south, but we've never been known to take the direct route anywhere!!

Our next Collective excursion is to Taronga Zoo, here in Sydney. Given how many times we've been there & photographed the animals before, it will be interesting to pick up some tips & maybe try out some bigger zoom lenses. Stay tuned for lots of photos of animal nostrils & inner ears...

I feel like I've been holding off doing a Journal entry, because I've been waiting for enough things to happen to make it worthwhile...

Then it gets to the point, on a quiet Friday night, when I realise that quite a bit has actually happened & I'd better write it down while I remember it

So let's go back a couple of weeks to the night of the Taylor Swift concert in Sydney... in the rain... A pretty spectacular thunderbolt & lightning storm delayed the start of her show by nearly an hour, meaning a lot of the pre-pubescents & under-10s were getting restless, fractious, whiny & sleepy, depending on how pre-pubescent they were - & there was quite a spectrum of them. I wasn't the oldest person in the arena, but it was probably a close race. The 2 support acts, good & great as they were, were largely forgotten by the time the lightning let up enough to get Taylor on stage. Just the lightning though - the rain kept up... or rather, coming down. Great show... & mercifully the PA was loud enough to drown out the Department of Youth's screams, shrieks & singing, for the most part. Unlike the Justin Timberlake & John Mayer shows I've endured. There's a whole other story there, or maybe two

After the added adventure of leaving the multi-storey carpark after the show (another story) & the rainy drive home, the real adventure of the night began...

We'd expected to be greeted by two hungry & disgruntled cats, who hadn't seen us since 7am (it was now 1.30am) & to be subtly herded towards the kitchen, so the obviously empty dinner bowls could be filled. Both Bella & Gigi were indeed doing their best "What time do you call this!!??" acts, but Bella was strangely subdued - not as vocal or insistent as usual, certainly. Then, when dinner late supper was served, she barely glanced at it & retreated under the dining table. That's when we heard the wheezing breath... & were even more concerned when she allowed L-SP to pick her up without a fight. That does it!! Where's the nearest 24 hour Vet!!!???

So 2am found us a few suburbs away, with Bella having half-heartedly soundtracked the drive with some feeble "mews", at the Emergency Vet, prepared for History to repeat itself & to reconcile ourselves to being a one-cat household. Long story short, she'd picked up 2 paralysis ticks, which, somehow, I'd missed whenever she demanded pats & fur-stroking from me. Unusually, their venom had affected her lungs first - it's normally the legs which go first. We'd got her to the Vet in time though &, other than a course of anti-venom & a full-body shave to ensure no other passengers, she'd be fine... Oh & there was a wound on her back leg. How did that happen? Simply put, she's a fierce protector of her territory & will fight any other cat, no matter its size. I'm surprised she still has both ears... A 2 week course of antibiotics would help that heal... never mind about my fingers trying to get 2 tablets a day down her throat (another story)

We picked her up the following day &, other than the Vets having lost our 2-cat carrier cage & Gigi not liking the look & smell of her newly-shaven sister, considered our little family lucky to be intact. Gigi did give Bella a pretty hard time for a couple of days, though I think most of it was motivated by payback... Like I said, Bella's a brawler & has attacked her own sister when there's no other target...

Next, I was contacted by the Production Team of a quiz show that screens on the ABC - Hard Quiz... I'd applied a while ago, when L-SP had sent me the web link as a kind of dare - the Host is notoriously... & hilariously, disrespectful of his contestants. I was invited to a cattle-call audition in town, where I had to get through a written quiz, then a trial quiz with 3 other people, then a 1-on-1 interview. After being told to stop answering questions so quickly, to give the others a go, I had a good feeling... I was told I was definitely through & would get a call in January, to see when I'd have to travel to Melbourne for filming. Watch this space??!!??!!!!!!!!

Other than that, it's been... life, really. Work has hit the downhill slope to year's end, though not as rapidly as some other years. Plenty to keep me busy though - I've become (again) the go-to legal document writer, or the guy who writes professional-sounding text when it's required... Which seems to be often. Not sure how worried I should be about that...

Oh... we DID get to do a mini-road trip to New South Wales central west area where, amongst other things (vineyards, radio telescopes, car-racetracks, gold-rush towns etc...), there's the world-class Western Plains Zoo. Our annual Zoo membership passes get us in for free, so it would be churlish to complain about the 4 hour direct drive (took us a bit longer - we NEVER take the direct route!!!), or that its hometown of Dubbo has little else to recommend it - apart from maybe the Hogsbreath Steakhouse. So here... have some photos

Back from a roadtrip down the south coast of New South Wales... checking out the area where we'd like to retire some day, with a few acres & a menagerie of animals & people

All signs are positive &, actually, there are a few places down there where I could possibly find work in my industry, meaning that we could head down there sooner, rather than some day later

And enjoy the views:



On another subject, it's been interesting seeing the way the #metoo movement has spawned the #notallmen counter-movement... where all the 'nice guys' try to convince womankind that we're not all sexist rapists

The (not so?!) funny thing about it is how indignant these notall men get, when women don't immediately shower them with praise & fall over themselves to go out with such a paragon of enlightened virtue. In the case of one notall man I peripherally know, it was almost amusing to see how quickly he went from extolling his aforementioned virtues, to roundly condemning women for not seeing how wonderful he is &, as above, not wanting to be in a loving relationship with him right now, dammit!!... thus, of course, proving nearlyall women's point... And really, after all, why should you be praised for simply meeting the required standard? If life was your job, would you really expect a performance bonus just for ticking the box marked 'manages all tasks adequately'? It takes a bit more than that to catch the Boss's eye

Down the California coast...

( For Big Sur!! )

Approaching the end of days... Only a few to go before going home

( Hang in there, Dear Reader )

Open up that Golden Gate...

( Bloody Tourists )

Two entries in two days... it's almost like real-time...

( Going To California... )

What happens in Vegas...

( Stays In Vegas )