19 February 2016

eyedunno

 

Its been so long I forget where we are (or where we’ve been), but we’re here now and that’s a fact.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Newcastle or thereabouts (cos we’re still trying to find a caravan park that will fit us in) but the last few weeks are a bit of a blur. I can’t remember where we were when I last blogged but I think it might have been around Kingscliff on the far NSW coast. Well, since then we’ve taken a lot of beach photos and whilst they all feature sand and surf they are of different places – I just forget which places they are….

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and since then there are a lot more like them.

But, we are nonetheless impressed. This northern NSW coastline is beautiful, the beaches are all pristine but whilst most of the beaches are themselves deserted, the coast is now highly developed. You can’t escape civilization. Housing estates crowd the foreshores, almost all the way down. I guess 7.5 million people in NSW choose to live by the coast.

But (again) there have been many other highlights which I still am having difficulty placing in chronological order however to attempt same..

  • we had several interactions with Ian & Wendy Gibbs in Grafton ranging from several dinners to Wendys’ guided tour of the Waterfall Way – altogether good fun. The Waterfall Way, so named because of all the waterfalls along the road running from Dorrigo basically to Armidale…..
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and to name just four of the eight we have the Newell, Sherrard, Dangar and upper and lower Ebor falls that we saw in ultimately two trips this way. The Dangar falls are in Dorrigo. So is the biggest railway museum in supposedly the southern hemisphere. Having not seen any others featuring so much rolling stock or so many engines I find it hard to dispute such a claim. However, its not open to the public. We got a guided tour by the very disgruntled general manager….
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We have the details of the Railway Society that over the last 40 or so years has collected all of this stuff with the intention of making it accessible to the public and to preserve it for future generations but has been thwarted by local bureaucracy. Its very disappointing that like most councils Dorrigo Shire is regressionist and unsupportive of business. Even the plan to operate one of the rail lines for tourism has been baulked.
There is lots more to say on the subject but I think this computer has sympathy with council cos it isn’t cooperating. I’ll have to shut …..