Murwillumbah, NSW

Rain set in mid-morning, so we wandered back to Murwillumbah again to check out the pool, our intent was to have a swim. We had also taken our internet thingy with us as it had stopped working and thought maybe it was some local problem. Needless to say it wasn't and we went and found Telstra who took two seconds to determine that we had used our entire 12 month allowance in 3 months. Rats. Threw money at the problem and it went away.

Had a really nice lunch at a cafe on the main road before having a wander about the shops, replacing the carving knife I seem to have thrown out with the pizza box last night. Drove around the back streets checking out the lovely old houses.

Gave up on swimming, went over to the railway station hoping to take a photo similar to one taken by Merv in 1951. Alas, those lovely old station signs have been replaced by 'modern' signs and have zero character. The North Coast line stopped here and folk had to take a bus the 25miles to the start of the Gold Coast. Before they built the line the two state governments involved started talking about going right through to Coolangatta, that was in 1889, and although the line closed in 2004, they are still talking about it!

We headed due east through the Caldera and admired the lush looking farms growing all kinds of stuff apart from sugar cane. I even correctly identified the stunted and strictly groomed small shrubs as camellias use for tea-leaves by the Madura company. Judy decided that we had better take a short cut and get back to our bread dough before it became over-blown, so we headed back, raining all the way.

Andrew and Kathryn and Ben are turning up tonight so we are off in a few minutes to pick them up from the airport.

Here's a snap, only Mervyn will know where it is and what it was used for.