Back to the high country

December 12, 2012

This concludes our December 2012 trip to Mallacoota including the trip back to Carwoola.

We started the day with a dog walk up Karbeethong Avenue, checking out the approaches used to keep the birds off the fruit. The traditional netting was popular ..

... while other houses used a more artisanal approach.

Once under way we stopped briefly at Gypsy Point Cemetery to check for flowers but pretty much everything had gone to seed.

So on down the road, back into NSW and our first stop at Eden. The first target was the RSL Hall on Calle Calle St. (For any readers qui habla Espanol, I have no idea why the thoroughfare is called Street Street Street.)

This is an excellent bit of work. Unfortunately the small label underneath is spoiled by the appearance of the name of the sometime member of Parliament, Jim Snow. Apart from any good points he may have had - none of which were apparent to me - he was a strong supporter of the wood chip mill at Eden which is definitely a Bad Thing (unless you were a Japanese person with a desperate need for some paper).

A little further down the street was the main Cenotaph, with a column and a number of plaques.

The most interesting plaque was this:

As we travel around NSW I am continually astonished at the number of memorials to aircraft that crashed in during WW 2. Had this been a combat zone one could understand it but the crashes just seemed to happen all the time.

Near the memorials was this building which had been visited several times by Mary McKillop. She got around that lady!

The nearby Catholic Church has one of the best positions of any church I have seen. Other points to note in this image are:

the snappy bell tower; and
the words on the sign!

Moving on towards the harbour we saw a great array of murals around the Killer Whale Museum.

Here is a close of the one depicting the legend of the Killer Whales (followed by the legend).

Usually when we have visited Eden it has been full of yachts from the Sydney to Hobart race which have retired after being smashed up by storms as they head South. However on this day t was quiet and peaceful under the stewardship of Mt Imlay.

We then trolled on up the road to Pambula where a War Memorial was in the main street.

So were these buildings dating from the 1890s.

More modern establishments sold us some fruit and veg while another provided an excellent steak and kidney pie (me ) and a baguette (Frances).

The next place on the agenda was Candelo reached by turning off the highway at Wolumla. To my surprise it had a MemorialHall (complete with Honour Roll) ...

... and there were Memorial gates on the outskirts of the town.

After a rather intriguing detour around some road-leaning-on-the shovels we next arrived in Candelo, site of the famous monthly markets. The cenotaph had a very long list of names with which I will not bore you. I was intrigued by the name of "John Gordon" so Googled it. My first hit was for a guy from the District who died in 2011. That seemed too modern but his father was also 'John' (although called Jack) and had an MBE (thus notable for something). He turns out to have been an ANZAC with the rank of Sergeant but that is all thus far!

The change sheds beside the oval have been cleverly decorated.

The older buildings above the oval appear to nicely maintained ..

... as does the theatre, being used on this day for some form of performance by the local school kids.

Our final intended stop was Bemboka, site of the famous (and for once that term is not overstatement) pie shop. Having already donated such an item to my calorie balance in Pambula I did not partake again.

The war memorial was an interesting design with all sorts of symbols around the column. (This area was also the site of a large two-up game in the middle of the street when we drove through one ANZAC day! Presumably the local cop - if he wasn't holding the kip - assumed the large crowd of people were all looking for a lost contact lens.)

A more recent memorial was the work of the local school kids. This is on the wall of the local dunny!

Another wall has other images.

We then traveled up Brown Mountain through the tree fern forest.

This road was closed for several months earlier in the year as a result of landslides due to the heavy rain. By comparison having to pause for a few minutes is a minor inconvenience. It did seem sensible to have traffic lights here as there really was only room for one lane of traffic.

We then passed back though Nimmitabel where Frances noticed this edifice. We must have driven through here at least 100 times and never noticed this old mill before. According to the sign it had been a windmill but was too close to the road so the builder had to remove the sails so that it didn't scare horses (I thought it was something totally different that scared horses).

A shot of the naturally treeless plains of the Monaro!

Finally, a few of the days birds. A Galah in the dawn sun.

A first year Pacific Gull at Eden.

Two (of many, very noisy) Little Corellas at Candelo. Judging by what followed, the bird pecking the other's foot was the female. I suspect any horses nearby would have been terrified but I was simply too slow with the camera.