Good Evans!

Once I had shown the girls Grafton Gaol and the corner of it that was previously the location of my grandmother's shop, we left Grafton, not via the highway, but the more peaceful Southgate Road.  I had planned a little surprise on this part of the route.  Jan was studying the map closely and looking more and more puzzled as we approached Lawrence. 'The bridge isn't marked on the map' she said. All became clear when I stopped at the ferry ramp.

We crossed the north arm of the Clarence River, tracked along the coastline of the northern end of Woodford Island, then over the spectacular old bridge to Maclean, Australia's 'Scottish Town'.  When I pointed out that the power poles there have tartans painted around the base, Jo said she would try to spot the Buchanan tartan.  Jan and I were dubious, but about three poles later there it was, right outside the Maclean Op Shop! 

Just outside town, we also found a flame tree looking good enough to be photographed. Whereas it wouldn't 'blind the weary driver', it was putting on a better show than its cousins in Grafton.

Next stop, and our last for the trip, was Evans Head.  We drove up onto the headland to drink in the view and then made a beeline for the bowls club.  Our accommodation was to be in The Bowlo cabins, next door to, and run by, the club.  What a good idea. You can walk to and from your accommodation for meals and drinkies, without ever having to worry about driving.

We were so thrilled by this arrangement that as soon as we had booked in (at the club itself), we had a celebratory drink before booking a table for dinner and heading to our cabin.

Because we could park right next to the steps, this was our chance to lug everything out of the car and show off our purchases.

 
Jo had snapped up a German mandoline in Gatton. Jan had not encountered one of these before, so we demonstrated it for her, and not to be outdone, she found one for herself in Coffs. It was not German but had more blade attachments.  Jan's other acquisitions included six Hawaiian shirts for her brother Gary (as per instructions), as well as a skeleton costume just in time for Halloween.  She couldn't resist it.  Jo also did her sisterly duty and her brother Rob now has several more tasteless ties to add to his tasteless tie collection.
She also acquired a tableful of bric-a-brac, not all of which is in this photo.
Once the show was over, we headed back to the club for dinner, the limited-overs cricket on TV, and the Evans Head debut of band Fozzy Bear who, just quietly, were rather good.

Not in these outfits, by the way. These are just some examples of our Op Shop Chic.

Coffs Coast

Continuing to collect lookouts, we headed to the one at the northern end of Sawtell before leaving town.  Coffs Harbour and its many op shops beckoned in the distance.  However, the lovely ladies at the Anglican op shop had told us there were a couple at Toormina, between the two towns, and very nice op shops they were.

We may have missed the LifeHouse in Bellingen by minutes, but the one at Toormina was big and beautiful.  So was the Vinnies, almost next door.  Jo found a koala jumper that appealed because of the real corks, and the fact that she has real koalas in her back yard, but resisted the urge to buy.

We only had limited time before the shops shut in Coffs, so headed straight for the op shop hub in Scarba Street that Mum and I knew so well.  We started at the Helicopter Shop. There is another one that I know of in Lismore, but are there any others? 

Next was the cavernous Legacy shop (because it would close at 11.30), which initially looked empty, but actually was quite well stocked.  Those of us who are amply proportioned always appreciate it when op shops separate the larger sizes onto separate racks.  Well this shop not only does that, but labels them 'Goddess Clothes'.  This goddess really appreciated that.  

Jo decided to buy a pair of salt and pepper shakers, and when she took them to the counter, pointed out to the saleswoman that they were heavy, presumably because they were still full. During this exercise, she managed to empty the pepper all over the counter, causing her to sneeze for the next hour or so.

Vinnies was next, where I have bought many things in the past, and then around the corner to what is now called the Heartbeat Market.  This may have been the biggest of all that we saw.  I was now at the stage where I was pretty op shopped out, but I did spot this little treausre of an EP.  We decided that we had all finished op shopping and would be purely tourists from now on.  We spotted another open shop on our way down to the Jetty but looked the other way.

Coffs Harbour Jetty was chockers because of a triathlon, so we looked at the boats but didn't stop, and headed north towards Grafton.  
We took the more scenic back route through Nana Glen and Glenreagh. I had hoped the jacarandas would be in bloom there, because Grafton in late October is an amazing experience. Photos do not do it justice.  We even spotted a tantalising preview in one of the op shops in Toormina.  Alas, we were too early.  There was only one little tree that put on a show for us, and the flame trees, famed in the Cold Chisel song, were disappointing as well. I have included a photo I took in Grafton in 2006, for comparison.

This would not be our only disappointment in Grafton.  Some time ago, Jo had acquired at an op shop a little milk jug that read 'Marble Bar Grafton'.  She had done some research and discovered that the Notaras brothesr had run two Marble Bar cafes in Grafton, so thought she would donate the jug to the Grafton Historical Society.  You can read about the Notaras family and see a photo of the original Marble Bar cafe here:

http://www.kythera-family.net/index.php?nav=117-119&did=6426-1&searchResult=searchResult

When Jo asked me about all this, like a good daughter of a Graftonian, I told her about the theatre opened by the Notaras family, and called the Saraton after a naming competition. It is 'Notaras' backwards.  I knew that the Saraton had recently been restored to its art deco glory, so included that in our tour of Grafton.  According to the internet, the historical society's museum is open till 4pm on a Saturday, so we headed there next.  Sadly, the internet lied.

Slumming it in Sawtell

I decided to take the girls to Sawtell because I love it and I hoped neither of them had been there. I was right.  Besides the beautiful trees in the main street, I particularly love the old cinema there.  I was most upset to hear a while ago that it had closed down.  We were already booked to stay on the Friday night at the Hotel Sawtell when I stumbled across an article on the internet about the theatre being saved and reopened due to a campaign headed by David Stratton, and now operating as an arthouse cinema.  Right, I thought, we'll go to a movie after dinner.

First, though, I had to show the girls the sea, so we drove straight to Bonville Head to complete our journey from the mountains to the coast.  It was beautiful up there and the surfers were out in force.

Then we cruised down First Avenue and the girls gasped at the trees, while I gasped at the  demolition sign on the cinema.  No movies for us tonight.

We parked out the front of the hotel and I booked in; was given the key to room 7, then left to find it myself.  I covered the entire top floor from front to back three times without success, then had to front up to the bar to admit defeat.  I was taken out onto the front verandah and shown a door with no number anywhere near it!  It was a simple room with three beds and no air conditioning.

I went back to the car, drove to the carpark at the back (where we could access the back stairs), only to find it full.  We ended up on the other side of the street in the grocery store carpark, having to haul our now-very-heavy luggage across the road through the restaurant, up the very steep main stairs (marked 'only use in emergency') into our room.  
 
We inspected the facilities: NO fridge anywhere. The common area consisted of a table in the hall equipped with an electric jug, cardboard cups, wooden stirrers and four bottles containing tea, coffee, sugar and UHT milk.  The jug would not fit under the tap in the sink in the Ladies' (way down the end of the hall), so you either used a cardboard cup to fill it, or the tap in the bath.  It was in this bath that I also washed up the dirty dishes from our picnic lunch, as there was no plug for the sink.  The bath itself had no shower curtain, so when you showered there, at one end of a long bathroom, you felt weirdly exposed.  We later solved the problem of keeping our goodies cold in the esky, by begging the bartender for some ice.  We dumped the contents of the icebucket into a plastic bag and that lasted long enough.  The interesting fact is that this accommodation cost us exactly $14 less than the magnificent apartment in Warwick.  What a difference being a seaside resort makes.  
 
At least we were in a convenient spot: directly over the road from the mighty Sawtell RSL.  From our verandah, its lights beckoned so over we went for a drink and dinner.  When we finally found a way to get in, we discovered the place was chockers. It was, of course, Friday night: meat tray night!  We put off ordering food till the raffles were drawn, hoping the crowd would thin out, then settled back to watch the spectacle.  Over against one wall was the largest collection of meat trays any of us had ever seen.  It looked like the meat section of a supermarket.  They started calling out numbers and flashing them up onto screens really quickly, and then we noticed that everyone had long rolls of paper with many numbers on them.  We befriended the man at the next table who told us that you received six numbers for a dollar.  He had invested $30 so had 180 numbers.  By the end of the draw, he had five meat trays. 'Last week I won nine', he said.  This is how the pensioners of Sawtell feed themselves.  I guess the Sawtell butcher does OK too.
We eventually managed to order and eat dinner, and found out next day via facebook that one of Jan's friends was actually in the same room at the same time, but neither spotted the other in the large crowd.

Next morning, we had breakfast at a coffee shop down the road, then popped into the Anglican op shop next door.  It may have been small, but in there I hit pay dirt.  I not only found another important part of my 4WD club Christmas party costume, but the frypan I had long been searching for. A couple of months ago, the handle fell off my favourite medium-sized frypan and I had been trying to find the perfect replacement ever since.  This one had never been used and still had the label stuck to the back.  They also had several plates from a '70s set that I used to own, but as I had disposed of mine, I wasn't tempted to buy them.
 
While the girls were trying on clothes, I popped down to look at the old cinema. It turns out that the demolition notice referred to the interior only, and that they are keeping the outside, building apartments above it, but there will still be a cinema inside. I may get there yet, some day.

Back to the hotel we went, where I had now moved the car outside the dungeon doorway, which was the exit when you used the back stairs.  The dungeon consisted of a cellar which doubled as the laundry. There was a poor woman working in there as I came past earlier.  To get outside you passed the dungeon, then went up three stairs to street level.  What a claustrophobic workplace!

We loaded up the car, but not before I had left my mark.  The fire evacuation signs all over the hotel were in need of a wee bit of correction. I only fixed the ones in the common area, not in our room, so they wouldn't know who to blame!

Chasing Waterfalls

I love the Waterfall Way. It is one of my favourite drives, so I had planned our route carefully to include it.

We had amassed enough snacky foods that we didn't need to actually prepare a picnic lunch, and when we arrived at Wollomombi Falls, there was no competition for the big picnic shed.  We hoed into our Granite Belt goodies under the watchful eye of a lone magpie, that regularly made little chirping noises like my cat. 'Feed me please.' Not the usual magpie call.

Then down to the falls lookout. They were flowing, but only a wee bit. Just once in my life, I would love to seen them in flood.  The gorge is still spectacular though, and I would never drive past without stopping for a look.  Is Wollomombi the tallest waterfall in Australia? It used to be an ongoing battle with Wallaman Falls in north Queensland, but I see that Tin Mine Falls in the Snowy Mountains has now entered the fray. 

Moving along, we now began to shed our warm clothes and started to watch the fuel gauge with interest.  I had planned to fill up in Armidale, but there was no garage on the road out and prices there were high.  I figured I had enough in the tank to get us to Dorrigo.  We arrived at Ebor Falls, where there was a lot more water to look at: different watershed, different river flow.  As we left the lower falls carpark, the fuel light came on.  This can be deceptive, as sometimes if you park facing downhill, it comes on early.  Even so, there is usually over 10 litres left in the tank at this point.  We stopped at the upper falls, where lichen is growing on everything, and the light still didn't go out, so I lost my nerve and stopped at the incredibly expensive Ebor servo. 15 litres would get us to the coast, I figured.

On through the rolling green fields and mountain vistas to Dorrigo, where Jo wanted to show us the antique shop and Jan wanted to show us the trains. I wanted to show them Dangar Falls.  The antique shop is huge, and 'never open', said Jo, exaggerating only slightly.  The shop is huge and absolutely crammed with stuff.  Next time I go to Dorrigo, it will definitely be on a Thursday. Next stop, Dangar Falls. They are lovely and on the outskirts of town.  Plenty of water there too.

Finally the trains.  There is a citizen of Dorrigo who loves trains. So he collects them. And  there they sit in a field on the north-western edge of town. Photos really don't do the collection justice.  You drive down the road to a dead end, and his engines, carriages and other railway goodies are on three sides of you. A lot of the carriages are decaying quite badly but the locos seem to be in pretty good nick.  As Molly would say, 'do yourself a favour' and go and see them yourself.

We had one more op shop visit planned for the day, the Life House in Bellingen, and we knew we would be cutting it fine.  We had not progressed far down the range, when we encountered a red light and a sign saying 'diesel spill on road'.  Well, we sat, and sat and sat. Finally it was our turn to move, and we passed what looked like a landslide, being worked upon feverishly.   Maybe they didn't have a 'landslide ahead' sign. Sadly, that was it for the Bellingen op shop.  There are two more small waterfalls spilling down beside the road on the way down, but there was no way to stop to photograph them in the traffic line-up in which we were sandwiched. 

We stopped in Bellingen for a while anyway, and checked out the beautiful (expensive) Commercial Emporium and the other lovely buildings in the main street.  The last section of the Waterfall Way was along the green Bellinger River flats, and then we headed for the sea and Sawtell.

Down in The Glen

Standing out on the hotel balcony (facing west) and taking photos, I decided Glen Innes wasn't so cold after all.  However, when we opened the front door into the side street to load the car, there was an icy blast blowing.  We loaded up in record time, although I did stop to photograph the unusual war memorial at the intersection.  A lamppost rather than one of the traditional shapes, it turned out to be a Boer War memorial.

We drove around town checking out the beautiful architecture of the shops, photographed the wisteria we had spotted on the way in the previous night (I think Glen Innes is the Wisteria Capital of Australia) popped up the hill to the standing stone circle, and then it was op shop opening time at the Salvos (Vinnies would not open for another hour).

It was quite a big shop with a separate furniture and bric-a-brac room out the back. Out there, I spotted a stuffed Ernie doll which was identical to the one my children just about wore out. It in turn had been a hand-me-down from my sister-in-law Fran's four children.

Jo found something truly wonderful here. A boxed set of silver fish knives and forks, tarnished but in excellent condition. I found a similar set for sale on ebay for $65, without the box.  That's a lot more than Jo paid!  Another treasure for sale there was an old dressing table mirror, with bevelled glass and petit-point stitching, one of the loveliest I have ever seen.  She said 'We had the matching comb and brush but I had to throw those out because we aren't allowed to sell anything that has been in contact with hair'.  I think you could have heard a pin drop, because we were all thinking the same thing and no-one knew what to say.

She then gave us directions to a Community op shop which we would later award Shop of the Day.  It was in a big metal shed a bit out of town.  People in Glen Innes must be big on silverware, because there was a glass case full of it in these unprepossessing surroundings.  It is also the only op shop where I have ever spotted an epergne.  I think I just bought one item of clothing there.  It's all a bit of a blur.  I do remember that the conversation between the volunteers was most entertaining.  One thing I had been looking for on this trip was a cheap salt/pepper shaker with the right size hole in the bottom and the bung intact, as I need one for my Rosenthal salt shaker.  I found just the thing, was removing the bung so I could measure the hole, when the bung flew across the room, never to be seen again. 

We knew we couldn't hang around waiting for Vinnies to open, as this was to be our longest distance day of travel, a day in which we would be tourists as much as shoppers, so it was next stop, Guyra. As we drove past all the Celtic location signs, we also spotted several items of old farm equipment sticks but didn't stop to photograph them.

Now I have always regarded Guyra as a less than-desirable-destination (translation: a bit of a dump*), so was surprised when Jo told us there was a great coffee shop there.  As we drove into town she said 'Maybe it was Uralla...'  Of the three coffee shops in Guyra, two had gone out of business but the other one was welcoming and warm. The tables, however, were big and square and we were so far away from each other, we just about had to shout.  There was a nice peach tree nearby to be fair.

* We parked in front of a stone with a plaque that announced a park honouring to the volunteers of Guyra who had contributed to the town in the past.  Said park was a grassy rectangle covered with parked cars. The only tree in it was planted to commemorate the centenary of federation in 2001.  It was providing shelter for one of the cars.  I rest my case.

On to Armidale, where there are surprisingly few op shops for a city of that size, but we only had time for one of them, as it turned out.   This was the Salvos, who had a wonderful window display of old Sally-Annie band uniforms, instruments and photos.  This was a good shop, with lots of everything, but I found the book section slightly disturbing.  Instead of sorting the books into some sort of sectional order, they were arranged according to size, in descending order from left to right, on each section of the shelf, and all jumbled in together. A volunteer with OCD perhaps?  It was also in this shop that Jo found one of the quirkiest items of the whole trip, a travelling strap-to-your-seat, fold-out pillow called 'Catchanap'.  I wonder how many they actually sold?

This was picnic day, and we turned towards the coast, along the Waterfall Way, towards our lunch destination.

Brass Monkey Country

We headed south from Warwick and as the granite outcrops started to appear, somebody said 'wine' so naturally we had to find some.  Rather than a a winery, we settled on Vincenzo's at Thulimbah because there we could stock up on edible goodies, eat lunch, taste wine, and escape the rapidly dropping temperatures.  It was also at Vincenzo's that we discovered our theme for the trip: things on sticks.  Last year, the theme was hi-viz clothing. We managed a selfie with a large apple on a stick before we scuttled into the warmth within. 

We tasted various whites, had a generous lunch and bought lots of yummies (that's my collection in the photo) before heading for Stanthorpe.
Buying clothes on this trip was more of a challenge than last year because of the temperature range we would encounter, from 35 degrees at Warwick to a predicted 7 at Glen Innes. We figured Stanthorpe would be the solution.  We started at the Sallies in the main street, where we asked the staff how to find more op shops.  They sent us to two more. Lifeline was next, but we would never have found Vinnies by ourselves: it was hidden in Stanthorpe suburbia.  I had no luck finding either a jacket or even a cardigan so would just have to settle for jeans with a long sleeved black top covered by a sort of open-weave poncho, that I had found in Warwick, come the cold night in Glen Innes. Stanthorpe was giving us a good preview, as the cold wind whistled through its streets.

I had one stroke of luck at Vinnies. I am constructing a costume for the 4WD club Christmas Party: fancy dress theme 'Australiana'. In Stanthorpe, I found a significant part of my costume, but there will be more of that in another blog.

We were about to cross the border and lose an hour to daylight saving, so knew we would be too late for the op shops of Tenterfield. We therefore declared our shopping over for the day, and headed onwards just as tourists. This is the car in Stanthore at the end of day two.  The Esky obviously came with us from Brisbane, because we needed to keep our wine cold!  Milk too.
 
On through Wallangarra till the willow trees welcomed us to Tenterfield. We had a quick drive along the beautiful avenue on the Bruxner Highway, a photo stop at the cork tree, the Saddler (right next to closed Vinnies) and Stannum House, and headed for Glen Innes. 

Our destination there was the Grand Central Hotel, our cheapest accommodation night, and another Street View find.  The stairs here were closer, internal, and neither as high nor scary. Our host was welcoming, and within half an hour, we were settled in our rooms, and ordering dinner in front of a log fire, surrounded by all thing Scottish.

Although we weren't self-contained this time, the Ladies' facilities were directly opposite our family room(s) and there was a spacious communal lounge/kitchen just down the hall.  We put all our coldies in the fridge, popped the cooler bricks in the freezer and settled down in front of the telly. I tried to light a fire with one log and a box-full of paper, but didn't quite succeed.


The big bed (Jo's turn) had side tables, but there were none in the two-bed room so I had to adapt.

We pulled out all our clothes purchases and modelled our outfits for each other's approval and then all had a good night's sleep.  In the morning we had another self-catered breakfast of cereal, tea/coffee, then headed outside...

and toast.