Tie me Kangaroo (Valley) down

(It is probably inappropriate to say anything good about Rolf Harris or his work these days, bur I thought his song with a similar (de-parenthesised) title was hilarious.  One original verse does need a bit of work, but "Let the traditional owners go loose, Bruce" doesn't scan well.  This seems to have been overcome in one set of lyrics and in fact the official version, by deleting the verse.)

We have just returned from a flying visit to Kangaroo Valley in the Shoalhaven area.  The impetus to this was to:

• check out elements of the Tulip Festival at Bowral; and
• meet up with some ANPS friends and check out their camper-trailers.

The interest started at the end of Briars Sharrow Rd where we found a group of cars, one of which had a sign saying "Walkers Ahead".  I wondered if this was a sponsored walk by Liam Haven -a soldier blinded by an IED in Iraq - from Sydney to Canberra.  If so they were taking an unusual route from Bungendore to Sydney!

I decided that we had driven the road through Tarago to Goulburn a few times recently so would take the slightly longer Bywong route for a change.  As far as we could tell it took about 3 minutes longer to the point the routes merge: allowing for

• the possibility of a slow driver (or wandering flock of sheep etc) adding to time on the Tarago route; or 
• an accident on the Highway adding time to the Bywong route

we decided it makes no difference in terms of time.

The bed of  Lake George looked very damp, but the main water body was well out across the bed .

Once at the Hume Highway we rumbled along taking the Berrima turnoff and then to Bowral.  This was all good although there was a notable lack of signage about how to get to the Corbett Gardens, where the Festival is based.  We parked at the station and set off on foot to track the Tulips down.  (Should be easy, they aren't fast runners.)

The first thing we found was this memorial to significant members of the community. (I would call them identities, but in Australia that term is reserved for the dodgier members of the horse racing industry.)

Nearby was the war memorial.

We found our way to the Gardens and as well as me taking photos with my camera Frances took some with her iPad.  The '150' in this display in the Gardens is a reference to the sesquicentenery of Boral and the nearby town of Moss Vale.  Tulip Time celebrated its half century in 2010.

This is my favourite view of the tulip display in the context of the Gardens.

As well as the bulbs themselves there was a fair bit of tulipiconography.  I hope these bricks came from the Bowral brickworks.

And this sculpture must be of sandstone from the nearby area.

There were some nice old buildings left including this memorial hall. I'm not sure if it is a War Memorial Hall so don't count it as such.

The Public School had  number of murals but they were hard to get at.  I did manage to get a photo of this mosaic, representing aspects of Bowral life.   The ghost of Don Bradman is particularly appealing.  (Bowral is the home of the Bradman Museum which now seems to have rebadged itself into "The International Cricket Hall of Fame": presumably the focus on Test Cricket and Bradman himself, will graduallydisappear to be replaced by displays on "Great Betting Scandals of the IPL" "Shane Warne's hairstying through the Ages" or the "Noisiest Music Played in a Big Bash Tournament".  Fortunately no-one has told the RTA or the Council about this and the signs on the Highway are still to the Bradman Museum.)

We then decided to go for a walk on Mount Gibraltar which form a backdrop between Bowral and Mittagong.  The base of the mountain was very, very weedy with escapee ivy andholly from the gardens.  Judging by the piles of dead stuff, the community is trying to redeem the situation but they have a job on their hands.  This Pittosporum was very attractive and well scented.

Another rainforest-looking tree with flowers.  No idea.

The road over Mt Gib. passes three lookouts.  This is the view over Bowral from the eponymous Lookout.

Although not visible in this (or any other that I took) image the high hedges of Photinia robusta were in the full flush of red growth shoots.  This is a zoom shot from the Bowral Lookout showing both the density of vegetation and the popularity of pencil pines.

This 'daisy' (ie member of the Asteraceae) is probably a member of the genus Olearia but I have no idea which species.  It was very common near the summit.

So was Stypandra glauca, which is a long way off flowering at Carwoola.

A Lomandra.

Leaving Bowral we headed off towards Kangaroo Valley.  At one point Frances pulled out her iPad to write a note and found it was displaying a map showing the route from Bowral to Robertson.  This was quite astonishing until we realised that the camera was still functional and it was simply displaying the image of the hard copy map in her lap!

A little later we passed the  "Southern Highlands Food and Wine Festival" at the Bong Bong race course.  I don't recall ever passing this spot before but the venue used to be famous for an incredibly boozy picnic race meeting.  We had to slow down as Mr Plod had found it necessary to put in a 40kph speed limit so got a look over the fence and it seemed quite popular.

We were briefly delayed by a passing freight train.  As most of the wagons held iron products I take a guess that it was going from Wollongong to 'somewhere'.

We passed Fitzroy Falls (without heading in as they are a National Park and thus canophobic)  headed down Barrengarry Mountain. The most interesting thing seen on the mountain was a fox munching into a roadkilled wombat.  Unfortunately our first passage scared it off and by the time we got back it had vanished so no image.  Possibly a good thing if you are eating as you read this.

At the bottom of the hill the escarpments of the Southern Highlands were as always stunning.

Kangaroo Valley has a War Memorial..

We stayed at the Tourist Park near the bridge which overall was a good place.  Large sites and plenty of trees.  It got cool in the evening and I couldn't work out how to turn the daytime lights off on the Jetta while keeping the ignition on for our floodlight.  Before we went to the tent for the night I was alerted by "noises in the night" to the presence of Brush-tailed possums in the tree above us.  At one stage I counted 3, of which two are included here.

This acrobat was mainly hanging from its tail while munching something.

The worry about the campsite was the presence of two two large groups of young people who had the effrontery to talk, laugh and quietly play music.  To get Ms Hanson and her colleagues really excited, one group were of Chinese ancestry and the others from the Middle East.  Unlike similar groups of Anglo's we have met they all headed for bed at curfew time (10pm) so I started off for a good nights sleep.

Apart from having to take Tammie out in the middle of the night (possibly a comfort stop, possibly to chase off terrestrial possums) I found it difficult to sleep soundly - I suspect dehydration - so didn't feel realy good in the morning.

Frances was taking photographs as we went up Barrengarry Mountain.  The sky was clear.

Near the top of the mountain the vegetation off the side of the road was rather dense.

The tree ferns were large both in numbers and height.

On getting to Moss Vale we went for a stroll and noticed a nice white sign outside the offices of the Shire Council.  A community view is shown a little later in this post.

This is the War Memorial in the grounds of the Services Club.

After a brief look round the town we headed for home through Sutton Forest.  They had a nice little Anglican church which was not open but there was plenty of interesting stuff in the graveyard around it.

There were a couple of plaques of this nature commemorating the early settlers in the area.  I'd suggest click on this to read it, as a very interesting, albeit ultimately sad, story.

As we drove out of town many of the fences were decorated with signs like this.

Obviously the local landowners share the views of the Council.  Unfortunately the State Government (and the new, unimproved Federal Government) are unsympathetic.  I suspect Hume Coal, POSCO and the frackers will be putting their better bottles of bubbly in the fridge.