Judy & Brian Tour Oz

Port Macquarie NSW September 2, 2015 One of the Commandants of the penal settlement was a Captain Innes. He returned to the district as a retired soldier and built a mansion on his grant of 2000 odd acres overlooking a (then) freshwater lake, which was later renamed by the Governor as Innes Lake in his honour. The house was made from local materials including a million odd hand-made bricks and hand split Bush Casuarina roofing shingles. It rivalled any of the grand homes in Sydney at the time, such as Elizabeth Bay house, Vaucluse House and the government houses. The family lived in it right through to the late 1800s, when it left their ownership. It was already falling into disuse and ruin, but a fire in the early 1900s sealed it's fate . Basically then, it has been a ruin, overrun by the rain forest since that time. I came here as a10 year old in about 1960 and I can only remember some stones and a lot of jungle. I do remember we travelled up from Laurieton via the Innes La...

Esperance WA April 15, 2015 Overcast, windy and showering again this morning. The only thing to do was visit the local museum, at least it's inside. Actually it's inside the old Bond stores, and houses a vast collection of items. Everything looks like its at least been cleaned and tidied a bit before being put on display, and they obviously move things around a bit to try and keep it interesting. here are a few snaps Early anaesthetic machine. Museum. Esperance WA Stepping out in style. Museum. Esperance WA Old farm machines. Museum. Esperance WA Various petrol pums. Museum. Esperance WA  Postage stamp vending machine. Museum. Esperance WA 'W' class steam locomotive. Museum. Esperance WA One of Esperance's claims to fame is that it's where a bunch of space junk from Skylab landed in 1979, I found their display a little disappointing, perhaps all the best bits have been sold off by their owners. No, it's not the actual Skylab. M...

The first thing i noticed this morning when i woke up was that it was perfectly quiet, except for the birdsong. I hadn't realised just how much the background drone of the Stuart Highway pervaded into even the back blocks of the caravan park in Darwin, or how often the big jets come roaring overhead. Anyhow, I just found it so much more relaxing. The only other noise you can here in the dead of night is the occasional freight train rumble past in the distance. Speaking of trains, the Ghan was in town today so just for fun we drove out to the station to have a look - it certainly is one long train. As we drove into the yards, we came cross a group of people walking out toward the main road, which i thought was pretty odd. When we drove out of the station, they had split up into 3 couples, one of whom had two small children with them. One of the couples had towels and I immediately assumed, correctly, that they were off the train and that they were walking to the hot springs. I may...

Wandered about today. Starting to panic, so many things we aught to do so little time to do them. Went back to the Museum  and Art gallery and spent an hour or two looking at the artefacts and criticising things we know nothing about. Our theme, as has been the last few years, is based around the existence of the aboriginal art. Now in this gallery, most of the stuff they have is old, well old for today, having been collected in the 70s and 80s. The point is, the 'art' as we see today, didn't exist prior to the 1970s, so why is it held in near religious reverence? At least the pieces in the museum purport to document some of the stories as opposed to the current pieces being produced. The long and short of it is that its just art when its produced in the form of a canvas or a convenient sheet of flattened bark. They have no history of art in this format. They only painted their possessions such as spears, shields and ceremonial items. The interesting items are the burial ...