Port Douglas Qld July 27th 2023

 Port Douglas Qld July 27th 2023

Took my morning stroll out along Mowbray Road, down across the creek of the same name and up into the back blocks. The sun was actually shining and it was quite pleasant.

Mountains behind caravan park, Glengarry Qld

One of my favourite bridges has had a facelift and been saved from demolition. I was just walking over it when the men from the local council turned up to inspect the vandal damage to the not even 4 week old reno. They have put bollards along each side and joined them with a nice 2 inch thick rope in the form of a handrail. Very decorative and stops us pedestrians from walking off the side of the bridge. One of these ropes had been cut right through. Must have taken some effort to do this. The air was blue with what the engineer said! And he was right, a very apt descriptive name for people who do this sort of thing. PS: two days later the rope on the other side was cut as well.

Let me bore you with a bridge story....

The first bridge was build in 1919 right after WWI as a job creation project for the returned Diggers, and was named the Anzac bridge. In 1940 it was replaced with a new bridge, just downstream from it, also given the Anzac bridge monicker.

Anzac bridge 1940 version, Mowbray Creek, Glengarry Qld

In 2019 Council wanted to rip the lovely old timber structure out and replace it with a concrete causeway style bridge. The local were upon in arms and mounted a protest. And sometimes people power can win because the new bridge was build more or less where the original 1919 bridge had been. They even saved one of the old concrete piles and put it in a park up the road.

Later on, another visit to Port Douglas to finish the shops off, hopefully without the rain. We had lunch at The Central Pub before taking a drive up through to Mossman, just for fun. It rained on and off all day, so driving around is about the only amusement. We took coffee and cake at the Bakery in Mossman and Judith finally found a vanilla slice worthy of her praise. It won mostly by not having a soggy bottom. Would have got five stars if the icing had been pink and hard. 

Adelaide SA Ford territory BS Stillwell Ford Central Markets Wakefield WWI SA Museum SA Library

Today the car was due at Stillwell Ford for it's 15,000km service. We turned up about 930, left the car  for their attention and took advantage of the courtesy car into town.

We walked up and down Rundle Mall, checking out some of the large and glossy department stores before walking down King William Street to Victoria Square and thence into the Central Markets. One thing for sure, the howling wind was glacial and we both froze our chops off before gratefully turning into the marketplace itself.

These markets are quite similar to the Vic Markets in Melbourne but with more emphasis on fresh food and goodies and almost none of the tat that makes up a lot of the Vic. We took coffee and a yummy Portuguese Tart and a Lemon Flan at Lucia's, not the only coffee shop there but probably the best that we saw. After marching up and down all the aisles and back and forth across all the rows, we  went back up toward Rundle Mall looking for lunch and perhaps a visit to the SA Museum.

Lunch we took in one of the malls, a delightful hot roast beef roll and potato bake. Just the thing to try and get the body temperature back up. We made it into the museum after a fair old wander about the shopping precinct, but in shades of our days in London all those years ago, we were too tired and too footsore to be bothered. Another coffee was called. We did actually walk into the museum proper and I for one was ready to walk right back out. I had forgotten that these places still exist; it's chock full of stuffed animals from all over the world, quite a few of which are now extinct, largely due to this sort of collecting by our ancestors. I went in expecting things from the Aboriginal culture and from the European settlement that started in 1836 as a social experiment to build a utopian society as espoused by Edward Wakefield while in goal in London.

We left the museum and were heading for the courtesy car pick-up point when we took a side-track into the SA Library. They were having a display of prints from The Forgotten Diggers, a collection of some 800 glass photo negatives found in a barn in Vignacourt in France depicting Australian WWI soldiers in a studio setting. The collection was purchased by Kerry Stokes AC and donated to the Australian War memorial in 2012. Now that is philanthropy! The photos are truly stunning in their clarity and quality but the sheer fact that someone, obviously a professional photographer, had the time, wherewithal and inclination to systematically photograph so many servicemen during such a period of turmoil is unbelievable. Almost as unbelievable as the fact that these glass plates survived intact and the images intact for a 100 years in a draught French barn.

Finally we were back at Stillwell Ford. First pleasant experience: 'All costs covered by Ford Australia sir, there is nothing to pay'. No nastily little surprises here then. Second pleasant surprise. The car had been hand-washed (they initially said they could only machine was it) and vacuumed out. It looked and smelt like the now car I had forgotten that it is. Well done them.

Anyhow, back at the van Judy took some time out with a book, a cuppa and the telly, I put a pair of shorts on and went for a long walk, barefoot, along the beach relishing in the lovely soft sand under my feet and the 'refreshing' waters of the ocean lapping at my ankles. Ah, Lovely!

No snaps today, just couldn't be bothered carting camera around all day.