Bart Bear's Blog

Gungagai is a small town on the Murrumbidgee river in New South Wales, about a 2 hour drive from Canberra. The town was originally built in the early 1800s on the the flat land near the river. On June 25, 1852, a flood completely destroyed the town and killed around 1/3 of the population. The town was rebuilt on higher ground and today contains examples of many types of old architecture, including some good Art-Deco examples in the main street. There are also some of the old buildings that survived the flood. The heroes of the 1852 flood were 4 local Wiradjuri men who used their bark canoes to rescue more than 50 people. A statue of 2 of them, Jackey Jackey and Yarri is in the main street. The other 2 were Long Jimmy and an unknown man.

Labels: buildings, Gundagai, New South Wales

Here's one of my favourite lighthouses, Warden Head light near Ulladulla. It was built in 1873 and originally put on the breakwater at the harbour. This turned out to be the wrong location as ships kept hitting the reefs outside Warden Head, 1.5 km south of the harbour, so the lighthouse was moved to the headland in 1879. It is a twin of the lighthouse at Wollongong harbour. These are the only lighthouses in NSW made from riveted iron plates. There is a good sealed road to the lighthouse, so we visit it any time we are in that part of the coast. Our last visit was on a wet, wild day in December and you can see the waves breaking on the shallow reefs. There are deeper reefs further out and these are where ships came to grief. The area is a great whale-watching spot and is packed with people in the season. The cliffs of the headland are full of marine fossils and you can pick samples up where parts of the cliff face have collapsed. Of course you need low tide on a calm day to walk around the rock shelf, not a day like this one.

Labels: lighthouse, New South Wales, south coast

Labels: Bateman's Bay, New South Wales, south coast

A year ago most of the east coast forests and ranges of New South Wales were burning. The roads that we use to travel to our favourite places on the south coast were impassable with fires raging all around them and the towns we most visit. Then COVID hit and travel was forbidden or unwise. So last week we finally had the chance to spend 2 days driving down to Batemans Bay and Mollymook (and back home of course). The forests along the roads are still recovering. Australian trees have evolved to cope with bushfires. Some of them actually need fire to germinate their seeds, so after bushfires you see a burst of these plants, mostly shrubs and wattles. Eucalypts have a different strategy. Under their bark they have loads of what the botanists call epicormic buds. These sprout as soon as growing conditions are right and the burnt tree is covered with what looks like a fuzz of leaves. Eventually normal growth of branches resumes. Most of the trees near the roads we travelled were still in this "fuzzy" stage. Some of the taller trees were almost back to normal. The small, dark plants in the clearer undergrowth are examples of some of the oldest plants on Earth; they are Buddawangs, cycads that date back to dinosaur times. Workmen are still clearing dead trees and repairing damaged roadwork. Let's hope that we now have many summers free of bushfires.
 

Labels: Bateman's Bay, Mollymook, New South Wales, south coast, trees

Whenever we are traveling near the coast, we try to check out as many beaches as time allows. Here are some from our trip down to see Unka Mark and Aunty Vicki. The first photo is across the mouth of Bateman's Bay. Canberrans just call it "The Bay". It is just 1.5 hours drive from Canberra. There are lots of beaches around the bay, some shallow and calm, just great for kids. The second photo is Wimbie beach. The islands in the background are the Tollgates. These mark the entry to the bay, and have colonies of Little Penguins, shearwaters and petrels living on them. Third is the lagoon at the southern end of Narooma Surf Beach. This beach has good surf and spectacular rock formations at each end. The lagoon usually has lots of seabirds in it, but they mush have known I was coming and flew away. We stayed at the Seahorse Inn in Boydtown. This inn was built in the 1840s to service whalers, but was abandoned when the owner went bankrupt. It was renovated in the 1930s and the 50s and is a great place to stay. It is right on the beachfront and the beach is long and wide. Milkshake, Scruffy and I spent hours on this beach. We found a small shrub where we could hide and watch for whales and birds. We also hunted along the tide line for pretty shells and any interesting flotsam that the waves had bought in. A sharp lookout for monster crabs was kept, but none were sighted. I love our beaches, they are bigger and better than any I have seen during my travels around the Pacific islands.

Labels: beach, Eden, New South Wales, south coast

Labels: animals, New South Wales, south coast

One of the things that we do during some Sydney stays is to take the ferry across to Manly. The ferries all leave from Circular Quay, so there is always a chance of seeing large cruise ships docked at the passenger terminal next to the ferry wharves. The top one here is "Queen Elizabeth". I have not been on her, but did meet up with her in Sydney Harbour when I was on the "Queen Mary 2". The smaller ship is "Explorer of the Seas" and I have cruised on her sister ship "Voyager of the Seas" a couple of times. When these ships are about to leave in the late afternoon the top decks are usually lined with passengers watching the departure. Several times we have stood on deck and noticed an interesting balcony with lots of people waving back to us. So Mum did some searching and found out that the balcony was part of a restaurant called Appetito. This time it was us on that balcony, drinking Chianti and waving to the passengers on the Queen as she departed. Mum lived in Manly until she was nearly 5 and we keep an eye on how the suburb changes. It is all plazas and tons of tourists in the town centre now. The flat where her aunt lived is still there, just a few streets back from the harbour. The beach is still one of the best in Sydney, not as big and crowded as Bondi. In my opinion it is better than the Hawaiian beaches, but there is a link to Hawaii here; this is the beach where Duke Kahanamoku introduced surfing to Australia. There are more photos of Manly in earlier posts if you want to use the search box.

Labels: New South Wales, Sydney

Last weekend we took Dad to Sydney for a real flash 3-day celebration of his passing the 3/4 century+1 birthday. There are loads of pictures of Sydney on the blog, so here's a few different ones. I like the look of the city at night, buildings like the Town Hall look great with the lights giving them a glow. Of course, it is ideal if you can sit with a great building in the background and a cocktail in the foreground. The building is the Queen Victoria Building, a restored heritage shopping mall, and the cocktails are in the Glass Brasserie, one of the top restaurants in Sydney (we fed the man steak, of course). Our hotel had an interesting spiral sculpture in the foyer and if I could have found a way to get to it I would have loved to tackle the 4-story climb to its top. The Oldies spend a bit of time shopping. I usually go with Dad as his idea of shopping involves hobby shops, much more interesting to small bears than the shops Mum goes to. Hobbyco is our favourite one in Sydney. We usually stock up on plastic kits, but have hit the stage where we have built all the interesting ones. So we started our collection of 1/76 scale fire engines. There is always something new to find in "the Big Smoke" and we thoroughly spoiled the Old Bloke.

Labels: models, New South Wales, Sydney

Labels: Canberra, gardens, New South Wales

Just east of Wagga Wagga is the Forest Hill RAAF base. This is the site of the RAAF College and the recruit training school. All of the recruits for non-flying areas of the RAAF learn their trades here. The RAAF doesn't use the airfield any more, it is now the Wagga Wagga airport. At the entry to the base there is a Heritage Museum and a paddock with several preserved jet aircraft on display. The aircraft have been treated for outside display. They have the canopies blacked out, the engine intake and exhaust areas closed, and armament removed. That means that the visitor can get right up to the aircraft, with the exception of the F-111. Naturally, we had to stop here. Mum really likes aircraft that look like they going supersonic even when they are on the ground, so she enjoyed "close encounters" with the F-111 and Mirage III. Dad is more into the older classics, so he spent ages checking every little bit of the Sabre, Meteor and Canberra. This small bear likes all of them and you can find me in 3 of the photos.

Labels: aircraft, history, New South Wales

Kapooka is an outer suburb of Wagga Wagga, New South Wales. Today it is home to Blamey Barracks, the training centre for Australian Army recruits. During World War 2 part of the Defence Force site was the Royal Australian Engineers Training Centre. On May 21, 1945, the worst accident in Australian military history happened here. 27 soldiers, most of them only 18 to 20 years old, were in a bunker being taught to prepare demolition charges. Something went horribly wrong and 26 of them were killed in an explosion. We visited the site on our last road trip and there is a simple, impressive memorial there. A rectangle of 26 trees and a series of explanatory signs surround the memorial site. Each tree has a small plaque at its base with the name, rank and age of a victim. A large rock has a memorial plaque on one side and on the other, rough, side the word UBIQUE. This is a Latin word meaning "everywhere", and is the motto of most Engineering Corps in British Commonwealth countries. Here is a larger image of the words on the plaque, I think they are sad, solemn and superb. We should never forget our history.

Labels: army, history, New South Wales

Labels: engineering, history, New South Wales, train

These pictures are of the site of Australia's Number 12 Prisoner of War camp at Cowra, New South Wales. We visited the site last weekend. During World War Two the camp held mainly Italian and Japanese POWs. The Japanese were in separate compounds for officers and other ranks. On the 5th of August 1944, 1100 Japanese prisoners attempted to escape. 359 of them succeeded in breaking out and were recaptured over the next 10 days. This was the largest prison escape of the war. 4 Australian soldiers and 231 Japanese prisoners were killed and 108 Japanese wounded. Most of the escapees intended to make their way to the coast and try to get boats; they obviously had no idea of the size of Australia. The camp was operational until the last prisoners were repatriated in 1947. Many of the Italians chose to remain in Australia. Today, all that remains at the camp site are some concrete foundations of the hospitals and mess huts. The other buildings were made only of wood and have long since disappeared. There are several memorials on the site and a replica of one of the guard towers. The site is on the Australian Register of Significant Heritage Sites. Nearby are the Japanese war cemetery and a beautiful memorial garden; you can find pictures of the garden in some of my older posts.

Labels: history, New South Wales

On our weekend trips we often meet interesting traffic. It is harvest time at present and here are two of the wide vehicles that we met last weekend. The wheat fields around Parkes in central New South Wales are being harvested and there are lots of these machines on the roads. You can see that both of them have their off-side wheels off the edge of the road. Even so, the red one took up all of its side of the road and a bit of ours as well. We had to drive on the very edge of our side of the road as it went past. We saw some harvesters at work in the fields, but too far away to get pictures.

Labels: New South Wales, trips

A fortnight ago, on one of our sunny Sunday drives, we found a piece of Australian history in a most unlikely place. This house in Bowning, a small town north of Canberra, may not look like much but it has links to two of Australia's best poets and to the Melbourne Cup. The house is Mayfield House. It belonged to the aunt of poet Henry Lawson and he lived here occasionally between 1899 and 1913. Another poet, Banjo Patterson, was sometimes a guest. Google these guys and you will find out about a "feud" between the two poets. It seems like a put-up job to this small bear as they wrote a lot of stuff in the same house and sent it to Sydney on the same train from Bowning railway station. Trains don't stop at the station anymore. Most of the tracks have been pulled up and people live in part of it. The old Coach House and stables are now Mayfield Mews, a garden centre and cafe. There is some interesting local art for sale as well and some of it makes a great climbing frame for small bears; can you see me? Back in 1861, the racehorse Archer was stabled here on his way to Melbourne where he won the first Melbourne Cup (actually, he won again the next year as well). I love our weekend drives, we always find out something new.

Labels: climbing, history, New South Wales

Labels: buildings, history, New South Wales

An hour and a half drive from Canberra is the small town of Boorowa. We have driven through there many times but never noticed the significant difference in the War Memorial clock tower. Dad read about it in one of our books, so we drove up two weekends ago to take a closer look. Look at the clock faces. They do not have numbers on them, they have the name ANZAC. The memorial was designed by a World War 1 veteran and built in1933 in memory of the local soldiers who served in the war. Plaques honouring them and those who served in later conflicts are attached to the sides of the building. I haven't been able to find records of other clocks with ANZAC instead of numbers, so if you are passing through Boorowa stop and take a look at this (possibly) unique monument.

Labels: history, New South Wales

June 11 to 13 was a 3-day weekend, celebrating the Queen's birthday. The weather was great, so Mum looked for somewhere new we could drive to. She found that Sunday was an Open Day at Iandra Castle, just over 2 hours drive away. Although Iandra is commonly called a castle it is not really one. It is more like a manor house with castle-type bits added. It is 26 km north of Young in central New South Wales. Originally it was the homestead of George Young's Mt Oriel Station. Built of reinforced concrete around 1909, the "castle" has 57 rooms. We spent a couple of hours there and didn't see every room. There is a chapel somewhere, but I couldn't find it because there were hordes of visitors and time ran out on us. There is also a separate building with stables, a blacksmith's shop, storage for buggies and big bullock drays, and living quarters for some staff upstairs. And of course there are acres of gardens and lawns.  I couldn't identify all of the fruit growing in the orchard; the Oldies wouldn't let me pick any for taste testing. The whole estate is on the NSW State Heritage Register. Definitely worth visiting if you are in the area on one of the open days.

Labels: castle, history, New South Wales

The iconic radio telescope at Parkes is probably known to most people from its central role in the movie "The Dish". Well, the movie is almost accurate, just a few very small changes to history which those who were astronomers at the time can tell you about. Dad was a very junior astronomer then, but he gets a giggle or two watching the movie. Well, the telescope looks just like it does in the movie, apart from a new focus cabin (that's the white cube at the top of the three legs). Dad used the telescope for several research programs and has climbed all over, under and through the structure. Over the years the control desk was upgraded several times. The 1960's control set  was resurrected for the movie. It was the set that Dad learned to drive the telescope with and he was quite nostalgic seeing it on display in the visitors centre. Yes, has actually played cricket on the dish, like in the movie, but that was decades ago and it is not allowed now. And just in case you want to see the Town Hall shown in the movie, that is actually in Forbes, the next town south of Parkes.

Labels: astronomy, New South Wales, telescopes

We are just back from a 4-day road trip to two of the places where Dad used to work before he became a retired astronomer. The top photos are of Siding Spring Observatory (SSO), in the Warrumbungle Mountains of New South Wales. Dad was based at Mt Stromlo Observatory, near Canberra, but most of his research observations were made using telescopes here. In fact, he helped commission 2 of them, the big one in the square building and the small one on the left of the second image. The small one is a 24" diameter one that was specially designed to measure magnetic fields in space and Dad's team were the first to map the field of our Milky Way galaxy (MW) and the Magellanic Clouds (MC) using this telescope way back in the 1970s. The big one is a 2.3m that went into operation in 1984 and Dad made the first science observations with it. The team he was part of used it to work out how the MW and the MC were interfering with other, and to measure the large-scale structure of the Universe. The building shows signs of the bushfire that hit SSO in Jan 2013. The telescopes survived with some repairable heat and smoke damage. Dad's favourite telescope was a 40" that was sold just after he retired, and he also used the big 4m one that you can see in the background of the second image. The last 2 photos are the famous "Dish" at Parkes in central NSW. Most people know it from the movie, but Dad used it for just about all of his projects. The little dish in the background was also important. His group used it to map the Magellanic Stream, the first clue that the Milky Way and the Magellanic Clouds are an interacting system. Mum has helped with some projects at SSO as well, but in the days before me. I am actually quite proud of my clever Oldies, but I'm not going to tell them yet, and it was great to visit these places with them.

Labels: astronomy, Canberra, New South Wales, telescopes