Month: January 2023

After our The Drips adventure on Tuesday, we had a wonderful couple of days of rest. Both Lou and I were kind of banged up from our falls, so Wednesday we didn’t do much. Lou took Banjo, his dog, to the vet for shots and Christine and I just relaxed around the house. And, of course, we watched tennis.

There was a beautiful sunrise. The back of Lou’s house faces east so he gets good sunrises.

Later in the evening, we watched a big storm cloud come our way, but the rain actually missed us.

Thursday was another restful day. I like to go out to the aviaries and watch the birds. Some are friendly while others take flight as far away from the front of the cage as possible. Lou picked up a new bird on Tuesday in Mudgee. It’s bright yellow and is a ringneck parrot to go with his while and green ringnecks.

Friday was laundry day and we did 3 loads and pegged them out to dry. The hot sun does the job quickly. We did walk into town for a morning coffee. As I said, Rylstone is a very nice little town. We pass by 2 lovely stone cottages that I really admire.

While having coffee, we had a lovely chat with two young fellows who were in the area on holiday. We sounded like old locals as we were telling them of the area attractions and they were very keen on doing some of them.

Tomorrow we’re off to the central coast to stay with Lou’s sister Gloria and her husband Alex for a few days before heading north to visit Lou’s brother Tony and his wife Liz. Gloria and Lou have arranged for a bit of a family gathering on Saturday so we’ll be able to catch up with more family. So we ended the day packing and getting ready for our next adventure.

We had a great excursion today. Margaret picked us up in the trusty van a little after 9:00 a.m. and we headed toward Mudgee. Along the way, we saw the beautiful Windemere Lake, created by the Windemere Dam on the Cudgegong River.

Surprisingly, none of the locals in the van had ever actually seen the dam itself, so when we came upon the road sign for the dam, Margaret turned off the highway and very soon we were at the very large Windemere Dam. It took 10 years to build, completed in 1984. The dam is 67 meters tall (219 feet) and 852 meters long (2,795 feet long). The storage capacity in the lake is 368,000 mega-liters, which is about 100 billion gallons. Currently, the reservoir is full because they’ve been having rain over the past several weeks.

We walked to the center of the dam wall so we could see the outflow from the dam and were treated to a wonderful vista of the downstream valley.

We then headed on to our next wonderful experience, The Drip. The Dripping Wall is within the Goulburn National Park where the Goulburn River meanders through the surrounding plateaus. The rocky landscape reveals all the spectacular features of weathered sandstone terrain, undulating ridge-tops and abrupt gorges edged with ocher-colored cliffs and caves, and pagoda rock formations. The walk along the Goulburn River to The Drip was really beautiful and the high cliffs and lush vegetation provided natural air conditioning giving us a respite from the hot sun.

While we were walking along the path there was a loud cacophony of sound in the trees. It would come and go every 30 seconds or so. Daniel found a specimen of the maker of the sound, a cicada. It’s cicada season here! And, wow, do they ever make noise.

Clare is really good at taking group selfies.

The Drip is an area of significant Aboriginal heritage. With more than 300 known sites, located mostly along the river, the area is very important to the local Wiradjuri Aboriginal people. You can easily see why the indigenous people would be drawn to this area. It is truly an awesome place.

The Drip is a large cliff face where water flows through the porous rock above and eventually drips out into the river. It’s very refreshing to catch some drips and cool down. Along there river, there are places where visitors cool off in the river where the river is a bit deeper.

Near The Drip there are some large boulders in the river and a small pass-through between the boulders where the water creates a tiny waterfall. It sounded great and I wanted to take a picture. I had to scramble up and around a couple of boulders to get this shot.

Shortly after I took this photo a man came along and wanted a similar shot and to shoot a video of the entire area. While he was filming, I was trying to figure out how I was going to get back to the river bank because I did a fair amount of scrambling to get to that spot. After the man stopped filming, I watched him as he stepped off the boulder we were on, onto another smaller one that was sticking up, and then to a good landing place on another. I thought that route seemed pretty good so I wanted to copy his footsteps. I stepped off the first boulder and onto the second, but my forward momentum was not sufficient (the man had very long legs!) and before I knew it I went ass over teakettle backwards right into the river. The river wasn’t deep and so I hit bottom (mine) pretty quickly with my legs up in the area and my head in the water. Fortunately, I didn’t hit anything to cause an injury, just scraped a knee. I jumped up and started dealing with my cellphone, which was in my pocket, and a hearing aide that nearly came out. Of course, everyone was very alarmed to see me fall backwards off the rock, but soon I was standing up and feeling very foolish for having fallen. We were all laughing afterwards. I was pretty soaked, but my phone survived no worse for the wear and my hearing aide only needed an airing out to dry. All’s well that ends well, but I’ve given us a lot to laugh about as everyone recalls how I fell and what they saw and thought watching me go.

Christine was taking this photo with her back to me when I fell into the river, so it was good that she didn’t actually see the event, but those four did and can tell you all about it!

I wasn’t the only one to have a mishap. Lou had two tumbles, one coming down a sandy rock where his feet slid out from under him, landing hard on his butt, and again traversing some slippery rocks falling onto his knee and hip. He skinned his knee and we were all worried because his fall was on his artificial knee, but he wasn’t badly injured. We’ll both be sore tomorrow.

After that, we headed back to the parking area and on to our next destination, Hands on Rock. A short distance from The Drip is another Aboriginal sacred spot. The walk through the bush and then up a rather steep hill to an escarpment having a cave-like area was a bit challenging due to loose stones the higher up we went, but it was a wonderful site when we arrived at the area where the Hands were.

Hands on Rock is a very culturally significant and idiosyncratic Aboriginal site for the Wiradjuri people. This was a crucial meeting point for trading goods, tribal ceremonies and corroborees (dance ceremonies) that happened at different times of the year. This sacred site consists of over one hundred hand stencils of women and children, emu feet and other motifs. It is a very fine example of the stencil style of rock painting. The magnificent sandstone rock cliff is the canvas for the images that are created by blowing wet paint from the mouth over and around a held object. Age and wear of the stone have removed many of the stencils, but there are several still visible.

We hiked back to the car, with Daniel and Clare being Christine’s guardian angels while she came down the steep, slippery rocks. They have been so attentive to us old ladies traversing the landscape. On the drive back to Mudgee, we went through a charming town, Gulgong, a 19th-century gold rush town. Many of the older buildings have been preserved. We tried to find someplace for a late lunch, but nothing was open late afternoon. Before leaving Gulgong, we drove up Flirtation Hill which provided a 360 degree panoramic view of the central tablelands area.

We did stop for a bite to eat in Mudgee and then made our way back to Lou’s. It was another fun-filled, wonderful day exploring this fantastic and beautiful area. Again, surprisingly, Lou and Margaret had never been to either The Drip or Hands on Rock, but Clare and Daniel had. I told Margaret we need to keep coming back to visit so she’ll see the area’s attractions.

Today we all loaded into Margaret’s van and went on a road trip through the beautiful central tablelands. The map below shows our route (Eve A., the map’s for you!).

The central tablelands are part of the Capertee Valley, the second biggest valley in the world. The Great Dividing Range is a mountain range running essential the length of Australian down the eastern part of the country. The Great Dividing Range is an expansive collection of mountain ranges, plateaus, hilly upland areas and escarpments. To get to Rylstone from Sydney we drive through and over the Great Dividing range. It is visible from almost anywhere in the central tablelands area, which is just to the west of the mountains.

We set off from Rylstone at about 9:30 a.m. Very soon we were off on a dirt road bumping along through marvelous country. Margaret doesn’t seem to mind driving on dirt roads. She’s a very good driver. And it’s nice that we have a minivan, which was Ray’s and now is Margaret’s, so that we can all be together. Clare and Daniel sit in the third seat while Christine and I sit in the middle. Christine was sitting up front with Margaret, but I think she does better not in the front because seeing the narrow road and fearing oncoming cars causes anxiety. It has been an adventure on these road trips that have been mostly on dirt roads!

All of the photos in this post, until we are in Lithgow, were taken through the car window, so some aren’t quite clear. But you can get a sense for the grassland flats and then the huge sandstone escarpments in the mountains. These dirt roads go through areas of lush bush that show the scars of bushfires. Nearly all the trees have blackened trunks and we drove miles and miles through areas previously burned.

The vistas over the flat areas showing the Great Dividing Range off in the distance were glorious.

We eventually came to the very tiny town of Glen Davis. It had its heyday in the 1930s and 1940s as a shale oil town. It sits at the base of some very tall sandstone escarpments and is very isolated.

The road back to the main highway included some great views of a couple of high escarpments and peaks.

It’s difficult to see a long view of the Capertee Valley because there is road construct going on there. The place where there was a scenic lookout is being used for staging of equipment and construction material, so you can’t really see the full extent of the valley. One would actually not know that the Capertee Valley was there because the road is far above the floor of the valley. I did try to snap a shot on our drive by.

Margaret had an appointment in Lithgow to get one of the doors on the van fixed, so she wisely had combined our road trip through the tablelands with the run to Lithgow. We had lunch at McDonald’s and then walked into the town center. We passed Queen Elizabeth Park and strolled through, admiring the nice rose garden.

It wasn’t long before the van was done. Unfortunately, the door requires a part but at least it can be opened from the inside now. So we settled back in the van for the return trip to Rylstone, a drive of about 75 minutes. I enjoy the ride and we go through, or see signs for, wonderful small towns with great names like Marangaroo, Wallerawang, Cullen Bullen, Capertee, Kadisha, Round Swamp, Running Stream, and Clandulla. I’ll say it again, it’s beautiful country, and a joy to experience.

We arrived back home after a long day of riding, had dinner, and watched tennis again. We are really enjoying the tennis matches, although we all grunt, groan, and yelp with each long rally. It’s stressful to us, so we turned it off tonight and went to bed on the early side. Another day of touring is planned for tomorrow, so we need our rest.

It’s been several days since I’ve posted and the problem with that is I forget what we’ve done. Although, I do know that after our glowworm excursion on Tuesday, Lou, Christine and I didn’t do much at all on Wednesday. We all needed a day of rest.

On Thursday, I had a Zoom meeting related to my hospital board work. The meeting was at 4:00 p.m. Wednesday Eastern time, so that was 8:00 a.m. Thursday morning Aussie time. I have a little trouble getting my days straight, especially when I have to get it right due to having a meeting. My colleagues at UHS were very impressed and they say I set a record for being the most distant person to attend a UHS meeting.

After my meeting we went for a walk. Rylstone is a lovely, quaint little town and the countryside is very serene. I think Lou picked a great location and he is really happy here. We had a good walk through town and then we walked along the Cudgegong River. That’s the river we kayaked on last Sunday. Down behind the town’s fairgrounds there’s a nice place to swim in the river, if you were so inclined.

Here’s a poor selfie attempt in front of the Welcome to Rylstone sign.

Later in the afternoon, Lou did some yard work and his neighbor Christian came over to help do the edging. Lou’s got an acre of land to care for and he is working to make it full of plants, shrubs, trees and flowers. It’s a beautiful garden with lots of flowering things. Lou is also an avid bird keeper and he has several aviaries with wonderfully colored birds.

After dinner we spent the evening watching tennis.

Friday I did laundry in the morning and then had a lake association Zoom meeting at 11:00 a.m. Everyone kind of puttered around much of the day. Lou is always off doing chores around the property. And I watched tennis. At 5:00 p.m. Lou’s neighbor Debra came for a drink. She’s an interesting woman who lives in Sydney, but comes up to her weekender. She is a case manager in labor relations. We enjoyed talking with her and when Margaret, Clare and Daniel came to join us for dinner, we invited Debra to stay and eat with us, so we had a table full. It was a nice evening with good food and conversation.

Saturday I went to Mudgee with Lou to do grocery shopping. On the way we passed the Windemere Dam. The Cudgegong River is dammed in 3 places, one in Rylstone, one close to Mudgee at Windemere, and the last is Burrendong Dam. Windemere is a very large lake and it is beautiful nestled among the rolling hills.

After shopping and lunch we went to Margaret’s to help with a project. She is replacing one of her water tanks, but the concrete pad where the old one sits needs to be enlarged to accommodate the larger new tank. So, she needed to pour concrete. Lou and Margaret’s brother Ray, who tragically died in an accident last year, was always one to acquire equipment and stuff and he had given Margaret a cement mixer that she’s had in a shed. Job one was to get the mixer down to the tank site, which meant putting new wheels on it. One wheel was replaced easily, but the other wouldn’t come off because we couldn’t get the cotter pin out of the hole, but we decided to try rolling it onto the trailer anyway. Fortunately, it did move and with lots of pushing and pulling, we got the thing in the trailer. Once down near the work site, Margaret was able to finally get the new wheel on after a lot of finagling. And, Ray was true to his word when he told Margaret the mixer did work. It started right up. Clare calculated the water to concrete mix formula and into the mixer they went. The old, rusty mixer did a fine job after a cloud of concrete dust spewed out. We all had to don masks to avoid inhaling all the dust. Clare did yeoman’s work shoveling the concrete out of the mixer and Margaret used trowels to tamp down the concrete. Lou and I were in charge of holding the mixer in place while the concrete either poured out or was shoveled and I toted the bags of concrete from the shed to the work site.

We worked hard, but it was fun working together. Unfortunately, we didn’t have enough bags of concrete to finish, but we’ll get the rest poured sometime next week. While we were pouring concrete, Christine was busy clipping the greenery overhanging the planter boxes lining the carport. It was nice that we could help Margaret with the work. She works so hard and is busy all the time so helping out is a good feeling.

Clare raises goats and there were many in the paddock. Some of you might recall that when we were here in 2020 one of her goats had twins which she named Christine and Linda. Here are 3-year-old Christine and Linda.

Saturday evening we had dinner with Margaret, Clare and Daniel. Daniel cooked kangaroo! At first, I was a little squeamish about eating kangaroo meat, but it was actually delicious. It’s a very lean meat that tastes somewhat like beef, but with a fuller flavor and not gamey.

And then Sunday was a day of rest and lots of tennis watching.

We had a great adventure today! One of the things I had noted while doing some research prior to our trip was the existence of a tunnel containing glowworms. We had experienced a fantastic glowworm excursion in New Zealand many years ago. During that excursion, we actually climbed in a boat and were paddled through an underground river into a large, very dark cavern to see the millions of glowworms hanging from the ceiling twinkling in the dark. It was memorable, and so I thought another glowworm experience would be worth having.

Margaret had an appointment in Lithgow in the morning, so that made going to the glowworm tunnel doable as the tunnel was about 35kms away from Lithgow in the Wollemi National Park. We would have had to go to Lithgow anyway to get to the tunnel, so it worked out well to tag along with Margaret. So off we went.

While Margaret was at her appointment, Lou, Christine, Daniel, Clare and I went to a shopping center to have a cuppa. Before we knew it, Margaret called to say she was finished. Daniel went to pick her up while we finished our coffees. Then the adventure started.

I didn’t know that the road from Lithgow to the glowworm tunnel was going to be 30km of a dirt/gravel road. I felt kind of bad that Margaret had to drive slowly nearly the whole time while we bumped along the dirt road, and I hoped that the tunnel was going to be worth it. It took us nearly an hour to traverse the countryside to get to the car park for the tunnel. But actually, the drive was really interesting as we saw the remnants of the horrible bushfires that were occurring in 2019/2020 just prior to our last trip to Australia. We saw whole bush areas of gum trees that had been burned. The trunks of surviving trees were blackened, but the foliage at the top of the trees was green. If the fire burned all the way through the tree, of course the tree died. The pine forests were totally burned, leaving only the skeleton of the trunks and branches with a few clumps of pine cones still hanging on the trees. Those trees were all dead, of course. But nature is quite amazing in that trees do survive the ravages of fire.

Nearing the end of the road into the car park the track narrowed through rock cliffs and then we had to drive through a tunnel. All this was part of the Wolgan Valley Railway, built in the early 1900s in order to transport supplies to and from the shale oil mines. The railway ran 51km and a long, 400m tunnel was dug through the rock mountain. The railway only operated until 1932 and I found it interesting to learn that the rail itself was all dug up and shipped off to northern Africa during WWII and was used in anti-tank traps.

The trail from the car park to the glowworm tunnel was about a mile and it was a lovely walk through both rock walls and bush.

All the way to the tunnel we saw evidence of fire damage as you might have noticed in some of the pictures above. It must have been an inferno of flames rushing through the narrow gorge. The photo below shows the evidence of fire on the trunk of tree. Close up it looks like animal fur, but its the fibers contained within the bark of the tree. This tree survived.

We certainly weren’t very prepared for entering a long, dark tunnel as we didn’t have any torches (flashlights), but thank goodness for cellphone flashlights. It got very dark, very quickly. The old rail bed was anything but smooth or level and there was quite a bit of water in many puddles. We had to stumble our way along in near darkness hugging the rock wall where there was a bit of a ledge that kept us out of most of the water. It was very slow going. Clare and Daniel saved the day by illuminating our path and keeping us from falling. They were so sweet being our protectors.

Glowworms are tiny insect larvae that glow through bioluminescence. They have fine filaments that hang down that are sticky and trap other insects for food. There’s a picture below.

On the way through the tunnel we didn’t really see many glowworms and again I felt terrible for dragging everyone out to do this trek. The glowworms are affected by sound and light causing them to turn off their light. While we were going through the tunnel, several groups with noisy children passed us and I kept trying to shush them. Also, people were shining their torches up at the ceiling as well, so the glowworms weren’t lighting up and I was frustrated.

We finally made it to the far end of the tunnel into the light, and this area was very beautiful. We wandered around exploring the small creek and the sandstone rocks.

There were hiking tracks through the bush back to the car park, but these were closed due to damage from flooding, so we had to return through the tunnel. Surprisingly, it was much easier on the return trip, and we didn’t have a lot of other noisy people around us. Again, Daniel and Clare illuminated our path, but it seemed so much easier and it took us half the time to return through the tunnel. The wonderful part of the return, though, was our ability to see thousands of glowworms all over the ceiling, down the sides, and even some near the water at the base. We all were in awe of the sight of the glowworms. It was like looking up into the sky on a dark night. As your eyes adjust, you see more and more stars in the sky, and that’s just the way it was in the tunnel. It was great! I was very happy that we got to see the glowworms because it did make all the effort to get there worthwhile. And even the drive back down the 30kms of dirt road didn’t seem as bad!

We stopped in Lithgow for a snack, as we had not eaten any lunch, and then drove back to Rylstone. It was a great adventure today. Now, back at home, we’re watching the Australian Open tennis tournament and enjoying that very much. They televise matches all day, into the night, here, so we’re getting our fill of tennis. We’ll have a couple of down days now. We’ve only been here a few days, but it seems like we’ve been on the go since we’ve arrived. It’s been great, so far but I’m looking forward to staying put for a couple of days.

Today we set out on another adventure with Lou, Margaret, Clare and Daniel to explore areas associated with the Australian gold rush that occurred from 1851 until the end of the 19th century. Like our American gold rush, thousands of diggers and prospectors flocked to the area and lots of towns sprang up to accommodate the needs of the growing population. Because Australia was settled as convict colonies, naturally there was a fair amount of fraud and crime associated with the gold rush and so the developing towns were one way to try and create a safer environment.

We drove through beautiful countryside, rolling hills, forests, and fields on two-lane roads so we were up close to nature. There is incredible diversity in the geography and I love seeing all the various landscapes.

Our first stop was at a museum and gold mine called History Hill. This is a private collection of an enormous amount of stuff collected over decades that tells the story of gold mining in the area. The person responsible for collecting all the material and laying it all out in a huge building is Malcolm Drinkwater. He met us at the entrance and he is one of the most knowledgeable historians of gold, mining and the gold rush era. We could have spent an entire day going through the museum if we stopped to read all the signage related to the displays. One of the surprising things to me was the collection of items showing the roll and influence of Chinese prospectors. And we certainly could feel what a hard life gold mining was through the photos and stories on display. The museum also had a large collection of glass including glass that contains uranium in the sand used to make the glass. Under black light, this glass takes on an iridescent yellow-green glow. I was also amazed by the drug-related bottles and advertising showing heroin and cocaine as medicinal products. I certainly knew about this, but it is always shocking to see.

We then went into a gold mine. Although the gold was all tapped out, it was quite interesting to enter the mine. The entrance was on the side of a hill and the tunnel was dug into the hill so the hill was increasingly deep on top of you. To think that most of the mine was dug by hand through hard rock quartz was mind boggling. Most of the gold mined in the area was crystalline quartz gold. Large seams of quartz were identified and a mine was dug following the quartz. Chunks of quartz were dug out and sent to a crusher. The gold was then extracted from the crushed quartz. At this mine, an extraordinarily large chunk of gold was extracted, the so-called Beyers and Holtermann Specimen. This was the world’s largest single mass of gold producing 3,000 ounces of gold. There was a replica showing the actual size of the gold piece where we had our photo taken.

The mine went back into the hill about 400 meters. I can’t imagine the effort that went in to digging out the rock. Eventually the tunnel turned upward in a shaft to the top of the hill where the quartz was bucketed up, initially under horse power, and then by steam engine.

It was an interesting foray into the world of gold mining and well worth the visit.

We then drove into the nearby historic gold mining town of Hill End. Several buildings were preserved and it was a quaint town. After a bite to eat, we drove up to a lookout spot on top of Bald Hill. It gave a nice panoramic view of the countryside.

On the way back down the hill we saw a couple of kangaroos, one very near the road so of course we had to stop for a photo. It was only about 10 feet away from the car.

One of the things Daniel was interested in having us experience was panning for gold. He had all the equipment we needed so we ventured off to a spot where he thought we might have some luck. The creek was nearly dry, with only a couple of puddles available for panning, but we got to it.

Gold, as I mentioned, is formed naturally in quartz deposits in the earth. When erosion takes place, exposed veins of gold break off and wash into rivers and streams. The natural movement of the water tumbles the gold against sand and rocks, forming the Natural Gold Nugget. Gold rushes are often first caused when someone finds gold in a stream or creek.

Daniel was very methodical in his approach. He dug up a bucket of silt and creek debris, dumped a shovelful into his pan, and started swirling the water around to loosen mud. The larger rocks are tossed out of the pan leaving very small pebbles and sand in the pan. By swirling the water around in the pan, any gold will become visible as it is heavier and can be seen around the edges of the pan. He did find several small flecks of gold. I, on the other hand, did not. It takes a lot of skill and concentration to be successful. You really have to look hard to find tiny flecks. Clare’s approach was to collect chunks of quartz from the creek bottom and pound them with a stone to break the quartz into smaller pieces in an attempt to find the gold flecks still within the quartz. She found several promising specimens.

After panning for a while, we headed to Mudgee, a larger town. We found a Thai restaurant and had dinner. We then headed back home to Rylstone. It was a long day, with a lot of driving done by Margaret, about 130 miles total. When you live out in the tableland area, one gets used to driving a lot. Mudgee is a main place for shopping, and is 45 minutes from Rylstone. Lithgow, a larger city, frequently visited for health appointments and bigger shopping, is 75 minutes away. So driving a lot is par for the course. But I thoroughly enjoyed the day’s excursion. I love seeing the land and I’m learning a lot, and it’s fun spending time with Margaret, Clare and Daniel.

I got up fairly early and when I looked out the back window, I saw this:

Lou says that most evenings and many mornings there will be several kangaroos out in the field. I’m sure Aussie don’t look twice at kangaroos and would rather they disappear. Like deer are for us, they are incredible road hazards, but out there in the field in the morning mist, these two looked beautiful.

I had a morning walk with Lou and Banjo and had a cuppa at the cafe. Lou went off to church while we stayed home catching up on things. Then, we had a big adventure. We decided to go kayaking with Margaret, Clare and Daniel. It was no easy thing to get all of the gear and kayaks loaded. We took 2 vehicles with Lou having a trailer that had 3 single kayaks and 1 double kayak loaded up. Clare had her inflatable paddleboard on top of her car. Off we went to a place called Dunns Swamp. It was about 40 minutes away and we had to drive a gravel road part way. This is a beautiful area, referred to as the central tableland. There are majestic escarpments of sandstone, lots of grassy fields, and forests of gum trees. It’s very diverse.

As we drove, Clare stopped ahead of us and all of a sudden Daniel jumped out of the car and went running down the road behind us. What we learned was the double kayak that was on the top rack of the trailer shot out the back and landed in the road, much to our surprise. It was a good thing they saw it because we were unaware. So, it took some effort to get the kayak reloaded and better secured, and apparently, along the way, we lost several of the rags and rubber mats that were underneath the kayak to prevent scratching.

We got to the boat ramp at Dunns Swamp and unloaded and were finally able to launch, and what a wonderful paddle we had on the Cudgegong River. The Aboriginal name for the area is Ganguddy and the river flows through the Wollemi National Park. The allure of this particular part of the river is that it flows through huge pagoda rock formations. These are clastic sedimentary rock formations that look a bit like stacked slabs. What I learned is that pieces of rock, called clast, wash down into the sediment and are pressured by sand and clay over millions of years to form sandstone. When you look at clastic sandstone you’ll see all kinds of rock debris embedded in the sandstone.

It was a glorious paddle, and because it was later in the day, it wasn’t so terribly hot. The river flowed through walls of rock and around many bends in the river. It was an easy paddle as there was no current and little wind.

We all really enjoyed our afternoon on the river. We will likely return one day during our visit and spend a whole day. The river goes in the other direction, and we should explore it, too.

We loaded up and started our journey home. This time, we had the double kayak so secured that it would never fall off. However, every mile or so, Clare’s car would stop, Daniel would jump out, and recover either a rag or a rubber mat that we lost on the way in. That happened about 5 times. We were amazed that they even saw them, but they did. Daniel even picked up some empty cans along the road that he also took. The sun was setting as we drove home and I shot this photo from the car.

Back at Lou’s, we had leftovers from the night before. After dinner, everyone was engaged in planning our next adventure or two. Margaret is currently on holiday from her school bus driving job, so until the end of January, she is able to go on adventures with us. Everyone has an idea of what we should do and I had done some research, as well, so I have a couple of ideas. Our tomorrow adventure is now planned.

So we came to the end of a wonderful day. Kayaking was fantastic, and to do it with Lou, Margaret and the kids was just terrific.

Happy New Year! We’re celebrating the new year by traveling “Down Under” for a visit to the Aussie cousins. We are traveling from Elmira to Detroit to Los Angeles, with an overnight stay, and then on to Sydney. My brother Grant drove us to the Elmira airport. We were lucky with the weather, as traveling in January may mean snow, but it was essentially cloudy but clear. We’ve been having a mild winter so far, so we were relieved to be getting out of both Elmira and Detroit. We had no problems at all with our flights, which is nice. And being able to sleep in a bed before our very long flight to Sydney was a blessing. However, figuring out how to get to our hotel in LA was a bit of a challenge. Taxis and Ubers are not permitted near the arrivals area so we learned you have to board a shuttle bus and travel about 15 minutes to get to the area for taxis and Ubers. Even thought our hotel was less than 2 miles from the airport, it didn’t provide a shuttle, which irked me, but we did manage to get a taxi to the hotel. The shuttle bus to the taxi area was longer than our ride to the hotel.

Wednesday we had a late checkout of the hotel, but it was still way to early to get to the airport, so we hung out in the lobby of the hotel for a few hours. We eventually got an Uber back to the airport (much less expensive than a taxi!) and managed to navigate through bag drop off and security without much fuss, although trying to check in using the required kiosk was a no go and we got sent to assisted check in. We often don’t do well with kiosks, so I wasn’t surprised we got sent to the flunked automatic check in line. Our flight was only 15 minutes delayed and at about 9:15pm we were off to Australia on a 15 hour flight, ugh. The flight wasn’t too bad, although sleeping was difficult. We make sure to get up and walk up and down the isle every couple of hours. The airplane was totally full with 306 passengers on board. Quite mind boggling, really, to think of all of us, and all our baggage, in a relatively small space high in the air.

We arrived in Sydney at about 7:15am on Friday, skipping over Thursday. It’s hard to get our heads wrapped about the date/time flying across the International Dateline. We’re 16 hours ahead of Eastern time. Cousin Louis had sent a message to us about pick up arrangements, but we didn’t receive it in the air and only saw it when we landed. Instead of Louis, cousin Gloria and her husband Alex were waiting for us. It was lovely to see them. They drove us to Richmond where we were meeting up with Louis, cousin Margaret and her daughter Clare. Where we’re staying with Lou is in Rylstone which is about 3-1/2 hours away so Richmond is about a third of the way. Margaret and Clare were getting haircuts there so it was a good rendezvous spot. Alex and Gloria were so nice to have volunteered to pick us up. They are wonderful people, always giving and helping. We had a good time catching up with them driving to Richmond and waiting for Lou.

We met up with Lou and waited a bit more for Margaret and Clare. Here’s a group photo that Alex took while we were waiting.

By the time we were on our way, it was after noon. We stopped in Windsor so Margaret could do some shopping. Lou, Christine and I wandered around the pedestrian mall. Windsor is quaint and has a lovely historic district. One of the things I love is all the beautiful wrought iron railings on the historic buildings.

Here’s a great picture of Lou and Christine.

We then set off to Lithgow for a late lunch and then headed to our final destination, Lou’s home in Rylstone.

Rylstone is a small, rural town. It is very quaint. Lou’s place is absolutely wonderful. It is in a pastoral setting. He calls it his Shangri-La, and it is that. He is very happy in his new home. I’ll show more of Lou’s home in a later post.

We had a long day and managed to stay awake until bedtime, which I think helped us with our jet lag. The next morning, we took a walk with Lou. He walks into town most mornings at 7:00am and goes to a cafe for a cup of coffee.

Saturday was to be a day of rest, but Lou got a call from his nephew Darren (Gloria and Alex’s 2nd son) and he asked if he could come for dinner. Lou had already planned one of his special baked dinners for Saturday night with Margaret, Clare and Daniel, so it wasn’t much extra effort to add a couple of more people. And so late in the afternoon Darren, wife Selina and their 2nd daughter Rachel arrive. That livened things up considerably. It was a wonderful evening full of stories and a lot of laughing.

So we’re now settled into our home away from home with Lou and looking forward to our time here.