November 2013 - Brisbane to Geelong

After flying back to Brisbane following the conference and awards night, we picked up the car and caravan from Gateway Airport Parking and headed to the south side of Brisbane where we stayed at Brisbane Gateway Resort.  

 We keep saying that caravan parks can't get any better, but this one is right up there with the best. Manicured gardens with palm trees giving good shade over well grassed sites.

We visited Mount Coot-Tha Botanical Gardens to see the National  Australia Remembers Freedom Wall.  

The wall commemorates 60 years of peace in the Pacific since World War Two, and commemorates the servicemen and servicewomen who gave their lives for our nation, and also to those who brought freedom to Australia, including workers on the land and organisations such as the Red Cross.

The Freedom Wall consists of two long walls which intersect with a circular wall on which 16000 plaques are mounted. The plaques were placed by family, friends and community members to remember lost loved ones.

This wall is a symbol of freedom. Australians should not forget the price that was paid to achieve this freedom.

The concept of this wall had it's origin in the national commemoration of the 50th anniversary of WW2. Australia remembers 1945 to 1995. 

The wall was opened on the 11/11/1996.

There is a lookout on top of the mount above the garden where visitors can see the city of Brisbane and all the way from the Sunshine Coast down to the Gold Coast.

As the Gold Coast was only a half hour drive from the caravan park, we visited the Australian Outback Spectacular show. What a good example of life in the outback. The current show features the story of Phar Lap which was interesting, but the outback story was much more interesting and exciting. They project images of outback scenes onto the end wall in the stadium which was spectacular.  At one stage the movie showing on the wall was of a cattle drive in the outback that was coming closer and closer to the audience, but when a herd of cows came out through the wall with a real live helicopter and cowboys on horses chasing them, things really started to hot up. 3D has nothing on this, the whole lot burst through the wall into the stadium arena in front of us.  This was truly spectacular.

There were cowboys and cowgirls along with folk driving feral utes and 4 wheel ag bikes that put on a show in the arena while a 3 course meal and drinks were served.

The meal was excellent with a very nice steak for main and pav for sweets. Makes you proud to be an Aussie amongst all the international visitors.

Next stop traveling south was Yamba which is on the mouth of the Clarence River.  This river is the biggest river on the east coast of Australia. We were looking forward to putting the boat in again to do some fishing, but the weather had turned really bad so we had to settle with sight seeing. This caravan park has possibly the best swimming pools we have seen on this trip. Pity it was too cold for a swim for us. 

We wanted to visit Tamworth so we headed off across the Gibraltar Ranges.  A bit of a slow trip as the road winds it's way up the ranges but some spectacular scenery along the way. 

Talk about a "loo-with-a-view" at one of the wayside stops. We drove through a town called Guyra which is right on top of the range. The sign at the caravan park boasted that it is the highest caravan park in Australia, being 4,330 feet (1,320 metres) above sea level.

We stopped over a couple of days at Armidale which is on the Tamworth side of the range. 

About 40 kilometres east of Armidale is the Wollomombi (pronounced "walla mom bee") Gorge which has the highest waterfall and deepest gorge in NSW.   The falls are 260 metres high and even with a minimum of water running over them, they still make spectacular view.
Tamworth is the home of country music in Australia and we expected to see country music on every corner, but not the case.  There is the Visitor Information Centre which has the "Walk a Country Mile" interpretive exhibition which presents the history of Australian Country Music featuring the personal memorabilia of many of our greatest country performers.

The Big Golden Guitar, which is a replica of the Golden Guitar Trophy that is presented to winners at the Country Music Awards, was created as a tribute to Tamworth's stature in the world of country music and stands outside the Gallery of Stars Wax Museum.  The museum features wax works of various country singers from the Smokey Dawson, Jimmy Little era through to Slim Dusty and up to current times with Lee Kernaghan, Troy Cassar-Daley, Becky Cole and Gina Jeffreys just to name a few.  

The most memorable for me was Chad Morgan as he brought back memories of our time in Meekatharra back in the seventies with Malcolm Taylor playing his 8 track cassettes flat out from his car which could be heard all around the yard and workshop.

Heading back to the coast again we stayed at Lake Macquarie with a site near the edge of the lake. Lake Macquarie is twice as large as Sydney Harbour and is the largest permanent salt water lake in the southern hemisphere. Judy out did me with the fishing again when she caught a little pinkie, unfortunately it had to go back in as it was under size, but at least she caught something.  We thought we had dodged the weather but not here, what a thunder storm we copped during the evening with rain and hail like we hadn't seen for some time.  Newcastle is only about 50 kilometres north so we did a day trip up there to catch up with some old work mates and had prawn rolls for lunch at the botanical gardens.
Continuing south along the coast we battled the Sydney traffic, went down the Bulli Pass into Port Kembla and onto Shellharbour.  We didn't like the look of the caravan park so as it was early enough in the day we pushed onto Kiama. What a gem of a little town with the caravan park right on the beach which was ideal for an overnight stop.
Batemans Bay is a popular holiday destination but we had read on Wiki Camps where people said that security of goods in the caravan parks was not good as things kept getting stolen.  We kept moving on down the coast to Moruya (Moria) which is right on the Moruya river and about 8 kilometres inland from the coast.  
Seventeen kilometres north of Moruya is the small town of Mogo which has been on TV for being home to the largest privately owned zoo in Australia. 
Mogo was born in the gold rush days of 1850's when gold was discovered in Cabbage Tree Creek, but now days they have  an authentically recreated 1850's Gold Rush era village for visitors to step back in time to discover how life was back in those days. 

We planned to visit both of these attractions but the weather turned savage with rain like we had seen at Lake Macquarie which left us confined to quarters.
Mogo is a very colourful little town with all the shops along the main road displaying their goods in a market type atmosphere. 

A lot of different artists have moved here over the years and there is some very clever work displayed amongst these shops.
This piece has been carved from a tree trunk with very intricate figures and different themes all the way around.



We moved on down the coast and set up camp in Eden at the Garden of Eden caravan park, another fabulous spot just 600 metres from the beach and right on the edge of Lake Curalo.

Eden has a great whaling history and we visited the Killer Whale Museum where the skeleton remains of "Old Tom" the killer whale are on display.
Old Tom and his pack of killer whales worked with the local whalemen of Twofold Bay for decades during the late 1800's and early 1900's.
The shore based whaling operation at Eden was unique in the co-operation between the whalemen and a pack of killer whales.  The killer whales, which returned each year, were identified by special markings, Tom, Hooky, Humpy and stranger would herd the baleen wales into Twofold bay.  They would alert the whalemen of their prey's arrival by "flop-tailing", (thrashing the water with their tails), and the chase would be on.

After the whale was harpooned, some of the killer whales would speed up its death by rolling over its blowhole to stop it breathing, while others would swim below to prevent it sounding (diving deep).
When the whale was dead, the killers would take the tongue and lips as their reward and leave the carcass for the whalemen to bring ashore.
Whaling from Twofold Bay continued until the late 1920's, with the last whale taken in 1928.
Old Tom's body was found floating in Twofold Bay on the 17th September 1930.  It was reported that no whales entered Twofold bay the following year.
It is estimated that at the end of whaling operations in Twofold Bay there were only 200 whales left.  Happily today these numbers have grown again to around 6,500, and Eden is once again an important whaling centre, this time by running whale watching tours to promote these beautiful majestic creatures to ensure their survival, instead of killing them.

The Davidson family were one of the many whalers in Eden and their whaling station was established in the 1860's. They were reportedly landing between 10 and 15 whales each season and this station was the longest surviving station in Eden.

Archer Davidson achieved the record in the Guiness Book of World Records for the largest marine animal killed by a hand harpoon, when he killed a blue whale which was 29.56 metres (97 feet) in Twofold Bay in 1910.  Its tail flukes measured 6.09 metres (20 feet) across and its jaw bone was 7.11 metres (23 foot 4 inches) long.

November 2013 - The Quick Trip Home

We always knew that there was going to be a quick trip back to Melbourne at the end of October,

as I was the  recipient of the Craig Roseneder Award for Technical and Maintenance Excellence at the 2012 Australian Trucking Association Technical and Maintenance Conference.  

Wayne Merrick from Boral in Brisbane is the 2013 winner

The prize for this award was a trip to the USA to attend their Technical and Maintenance  Convention, but it also meant that I had to present this years award to the 2013 winner as well as report back on my experience at the American TMC to our conference in Melbourne.  As usual, the conference dinner was an excellent evening with the guest speaker being Scott Higginbotham, The Melbourne Rebels captain and a player for the Australian Wallabies.

Another important function that we attended while we were in Geelong was the presentation of the National Emergency Medals to CFA personnel.

Judy, who is a member of the Maude Rural Fire Brigade, was awarded with one of these medals for the work that she did at the Black Saturday Kinglake fire with the CFA Critical Incident Support team from Region 7.  Judy was a part of the first CIS team that was sent to the Strethewen fire station to help the people through the stressful time and try to help them deal with the losses that they had suffered over the past 24 horrific hours as the fire burnt through from Kinglake.

Judy and the Region 7 CIS team worked tirelessly over the 4 days that they were stationed at  Strethewen, and then spent many hours in the days and weeks that followed, following up on both CFA volunteers as well as members of the public that they had made contact with while on the fire ground.

Critical Incident Support is a vital part of the non fire fighting work that the CFA does, and the support that the team were able to give those people at their time of need was well accepted and appreciated.

Judy, along with 66 other CFA members from the Barwon South West Region - District 6 & 7, were presented with their medals  by Sarah Henderson MP, Federal Member for Corangamite and Euan Ferguson AFSM, Chief Officer, CFA at a ceremony put on by CFA at Capri  Receptions on Wednesday 30/10/2013.

There were many other CFA personnel who also worked tirelessly during this devastating period in Victoria's dark history that didn't receive this medal.  This is not that they didn't deserve it, but that their service didn't fit the criterion for receiving this medal.
I am very proud of Judy receiving this medal, as I know how hard it was on her, not only at the fire on those bad days, but also for the weeks and months that followed while she dealt with the fall out from the contacts that she made while at the fire.

The National Emergency Medal

The National Emergency Medal was added to the Australian Honours and Awards in October 2011.  It recognises service to others during nationally significant emergencies.

The 2009 Victorian bush fires have been declared a nationally significant  emergency and members of CFA who rendered service during the specified dates of these fires are eligible for the National Emergency Medal.

The National Emergency Medal may be awarded to CFA members who rendered sustained service during specified dates in response to the nationally significant emergency. The medal may also be awarded to those members who rendered significant service in response to these fires, including those that do not satisfy the criteria for sustained service or the minimum duration.

The National Emergency Medal was instituted by Letters Patent by Her Majesty The Queen in October 2011. It is an operational service medal which recognises  significant or sustained service to others in a nationally significant emergency.

The decoration consists of a circular bronze medal with a stylized representation of Australia's national floral emblem, the wattle, in the centre. The ring around the central image is of flowering wattle, representing the accomplishments and sacrifices made by Australians in the service of others in times of crisis. The back of the medal repeats the ring of flowering wattle, and details the award and recipient.

The National Emergency Medal ribbon colours match the colours of the Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal ribbon. The colours of the ribbon are gold and eucalyptus green. Gold symbolises the Australia  sun, optimism and hope. Eucalyptus green complements the symbolism of the medal design. The seven gold coloured bands represent Australia's six states, with the seventh representing the territories. 

The trip home also gave us the opportunity to catch up on family and friends and it was great to see them all again.