Safari 2018 August 4th, 5th & 6th

Booked to camp at the Murwillumbah Show Grounds for 3 nights...a very successful site in the Tweed Valley.

View of Tweed River from Gallery Cafe

August 4th

The drive north-west today was both challenging and interesting..the challenge was to find the turn off from the Pacific Highway but after some time we were on our way! 
The terrain was hilly and quite narrow as we headed for Murwillumbah. Agriculture is intense in this part of the country. We saw passionfruit, sugar and Madura tea being grown. Sugar is harvested between June and January so most properties that grow sugar would have six months of harvesting different areas depending on the rotation of the fields. We saw, yet again, the familiar scene of billowing steam from the sugar processing plant. The Tweed River is a fertile and busy area. 
The Tweed Shire Council has its headquarters in Murwillumbah. Even the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre is here quite close to our camp. We spent a delightful hour or so looking at the amazing reconstruction of  the inside of Margaret Olley's home..where she lived, painted, entertained and died at 88 years of age. She is very well known for the painting of still life, in fact the ordinary things in her home. I have never seen into a home which has so much collected memorabilia, furniture, statues, flowers both artificial and dead, clothes,jugs, chipped cups and hats.

Inside the dining room of Margaret Olley's home

The dining table appeared to be set for guests..this was how her home was when she died. Now it has been made into a great focus of interest in the the world of art. I recommend visiting this amazing Gallery if you are in this north eastern corner of NSW.

As she left it --Margaret's pallet of paints, an apron and brushes

August 5th

I had enjoyed seeing Margaret Olley's home/studio that we returned for a second look. It is certainly amazing and zi was able to absorb more details of her life and paintings. We enjoyed a cuppa at the Gallery Cafe. In the restaurant we noticed Doug Anthony...an old man now. He was Leader of the National Party in earlier years. Doug actually donated the land on which this Tweed Region Gallery stands and then donated further adjacent land to enable the development of the Margaret Olley Art Centre. We felt it was an honour to see him in the Cafe enjoying the gallery that he had such an interest in.

Distant image of Mt Warning

Late morning we returned to our van, collected some lunch and drove to the foot of Mt Warning. There is a 5 hour return climb to the top. Of course this was not for us but we were amazed at the amount of cars parked at the start of the walk..they lined each side of the road for about a kilometre.

We lunched and then took a 'back road' which meandered its way around the base hills of Mt Warning. This mountain feature was first seen by Captain Cook from the sea. He felt it should serve as a warning to ships to beware of rocks when they saw the dominant landmark...so hence the name.
Tonight we plan to have dinner at a local Pub.

Rainforest trees and palms

August 6th,

We have had a great day. Firstly we headed for the coast and drove across the border into Queensland and out to Burleigh Heads, Broad beach and Surfers Paradise and the whole Gold Coast. Eventually we left the coast and drove west to Nerang. It is a long time since we have seen the coast so our reaction was one of amazement at the development. 

Our visit to Nerang was planned so I could visit a lady friend of mine with who I Graduated with from Bendigo Teachers' College in November 1968 - 60 years ago this year. It is hard to believe. We have kept in touch with each other all that time. It was an absolute joy to visit Dorothy in her home at Nerang. Her house backs onto Nerang Creek and she has a 'rain forest' type garden going down a steep bank to the Creek.

John took this photo of me with Dorothy in her wonderfully green garden

After leaving Nerang we came south again stopping off at the Springbrook National Park. The area is well known for a Natural Bridge of rock which forms a cave or grotto where glow worms live. We walked down an interesting track over and along Cave Creek through a rainforest where we could see huge rocks which have formed the cave that a waterfall runs into. (it is hard to explain!)

The natural bridge over Cave Creek

 We were lucky to see a small bright green bird hopping around under the trees. We identified it as a Noisy Pitta bird.