Road Trippin’……

It was mid-Winter 2016 and The Brave Man* decided it was time to escape the depressing grey skies and horizontal rain. I am not sure what happened to our normal blue sky Winter days but maybe there is no such thing as ‘normal weather’ anymore.

Last year the escape destination was Hawaii. This year it was a road trip up the NSW North coast. Hardly comparable but just as enjoyable and a classic case of ‘same, same but different’.

With the ute loaded to the gills (why do we need so much stuff?) we escaped rainy, grey Mudgee to arrive about five hours later in rainy, grey Tuncurry. We hoped that this was not a sign of things to come but the weather is the one thing we have absolutely NO control over.

Tuncurry reminds me of one of those sleepy coastal towns that existed in my childhood. Naturally it now has all the ‘mod cons’, but there is not much to it other than a gorgeous long beach and a netted rock pool. And to me, that simplicity is a good thing!

I remember when we first started visiting Tuncurry, a local asked me one morning after our early walk/swim ‘if there had been many teabags in the rock pool this morning?’ I must have looked a bit flummoxed as I searched my memory for images of Twinings or Dilmah teabags carelessly discarded and adrift in the water. As it turns out, this is a term of endearment for the senior citizens who congregate in the pool every morning and just dunk up and down! You’ve got to love the Australian sense of humour.

I love heading to the coast (even in the rain) from inland NSW because of the contrast in landscape and climate. There were tons of roadworks along the way and these enforced stops, waiting for a green light to proceed at snail’s pace, provided the perfect opportunity to study roadside vegetation.

The forests are dense and lush. The trees are like tall, lean electricity poles that have magically sprouted green shoots. Tree ferns appear as giant, bright emerald umbrellas that delicately shade the understorey and provide a layered, 3D-depth to the foliage.

One thing really puzzles me though, and it relates to those koala/possum trapezes that are suspended high above and across the highways. How do the koalas know which ‘tree’ to climb to access the trapeze and thereby safely cross the road? Perhaps it is like that saying, ‘you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find a prince’. Those poor animals have to climb a lot of trees before they find the right one connected to the trapeze. I can picture a unique brand of koala frustration and bad language!

I am also interested to understand how the small towns will cope once the road works, and the many bypasses currently under construction, are completed. Can they reinvent themselves? Do they have enough energy and initiative to provide reasons for travellers to abandon the highway, even for a short time? Or will the towns return to their original sleepy state?

We used the road trip to visit many old friends, long out of touch, and to visit all the little towns and villages that we had only ever heard about. Fabulous names such as Clybucca and Wizzenbucca literally whizzed by as we made our way up into the hinterland to Bellingen and Dorrigo.

As you leave the coast road, the countryside changes once again but this time into fertile, rolling hills. The green growth threatens to overtake every manmade structure and I can imagine that it is watching and waiting for its chance. Just as we turn our back, the green tendrils will extend and envelope everything. It is so luxuriant that even the livestock seem to be bored by the fodder growing up to their knees. ‘Ho hum’, they seem to say, ‘more delicious pasture’.

The pastoral landscape is deceptive though, as it neatly contrasts with the original timber industry that was the origin of Bellingen. I find it interesting that such harshness and deprivation was the forerunner to the quirky, cosmopolitan town that is Bellingen. You are under-dressed if your dreadlocks are not on show as you sip on your soy, skinny, decaf chai latte. It is wall-to-wall alternative life-stylers and, while that makes for an interesting day trip, I couldn’t possibly live amongst all that creative and organic energy. I am just too plain and boring.

After climbing the 14 kms of winding road and hair-pin bends, we popped up onto the Dorrigo plateau and it almost felt like arriving in a different country. We emerged from dense and choking rainforest into an open, rolling landscape revealing a traditional, wide-street rural town. While I could sense a creative streak bubbling under the surface of Dorrigo, the utes and dogs that dominated the main street made me feel like I was closer to Mudgee than to the beach.

A rather sad highlight of the Dorrigo township, is their impressive train graveyard. We seem to have a thing for driving long distances to visit closed museums (see my blog post: Looking for James Taylor), and this trip was no different. The Brave Man* is a train fanatic and had heard about the locals’ ambitious vision to establish a train museum and working tourist railway. Unfortunately the energy behind the vision ran out once the enormous collection of trains, carriages, stations and sundry rail memorabilia was assembled. From peering over the fence, it looks like the site will be the desolate, final resting place for much of the gear as it slowly crumbles and rusts into the paddock. Pure heartbreak for The Brave Man*.

But we had places to be and sights to see, and with a tear in his eye, he pointed the ute back towards the ocean.

The pursuit of warmth continued all the way up the NSW coast until we arrived at Queensland’s Gold Coast. It appears we must have mightily offended the Weather Gods as, even though the thermometer reluctantly crept higher, we seemed to travel under a permanent rain cloud.

Next year?

We need to find a closed museum in a DRY destination!

 

July 2016

*The Brave Man refers to my husband. He is indeed a brave man for marrying a crazy woman like me!