Maclean, NSW

For whatever reasons, we zoomed over to Maclean, about 20k upriver. It's a nice biggish town as well. One the hub of commercial transport on the Clarence, it's only claim today is to call upon its Scottish heritage, as many other towns do. They have a cairn they built, after they lost the bid for the real one that came out from Scotland in 1988 for the Bi-centenary and went to Mosman in Sydney. Their home-made cairn is made from real Scottish rocks however, so they are pretty pleased with it. They also have a bunch of Clan Chief poles showing the Chief's name and the Clan's tartan. All the telegraph poles (yes, all) in the town have a tartan painted around the bottom and all the street signs have the Scottish translation under them, mind you a lot of them seem to translate to No through road! What the need is some standing stones or at least a circle of standing cabers in the form of telegraph poles. I must tell them. Maybe they should rip over to Glen Innes and take their standing stones, they aren't doing much with them at the moment.

There is a park on the corner of the highway called Ferry Park, where apart from the i shop they have an old vehicular ferry and an old river barge. I love these ferries, as if you didn't know. This one is quite small, probably only two or maybe 4 T-model Fords and probably not the one that the Pacific Highway traffic went across the Clarence on until 1962.Ah, vehicular ferries, punts, as we called them. What a graceful and stress free way to travel the highway. Now of course its a 4 lane super bridge and Maclean is a name on a signpost flashing past your window. The river barge at least had a sign giving some of its history, it being the last of the barges, timber hulled and wooden sided, it carried 70 tons. The state of both exhibits was pretty bad however and its only a matter of time before they just disintegrate. 

Pictures for your amusement -> Maclean

Snap of the day

Vehicular Ferry. Maclean, NSW