The Gums Golf and Cricket Club

 Thursday, 1st July

I think it may have been a good while since either golf or cricket were played at this club but as the only overnight residents we weren’t complaining. It meant I could wander the fairways in my pjs with binoculars in hand adding some more birds to my bird list. 

 But I couldn’t spend the whole day indulging myself so once we decided to stay here another night we packed a picnic and set off for the Myall Park Botanic Gardens about 60km away. One of my Ballina birding mates had suggested it as a place of interest, not just for the birds but also the variety of plants.

Myall Park Botanic Garden is a large garden devoted to the growing of Australian Flora. It was established in 1941 by David Gordon.  From a very early age, Dave was interested in Australian flora.Gordon's long-term vision was to establish a large garden of native plants. A large part of the gardens were planted with Grevillia. Gordon named the hybrid Grevillea "Robyn Gordon" after his eldest daughter (who died aged 16 from illness in 1969) and distributed it freely to nurseries in Brisbane and Sydney, without payment. Two other hybrids, named after the Gordon's other daughters, Grevillea "Sandra Gordon"  and G.'Merinda Gordon' were also produced at Myall Park.

Although there are still lingering effects from the drought we enjoyed several of the pathways including the  Grevillia and Honeyeaters pathways. 

Today the Gardens are used for special events and often have ‘Artists in Residence’ . Samples of their works are dotted throughout the gardens. There is also a gallery but unfortunately it was not open today. Surrounded by all this nature inspired Michael’s Inner Botanist!

We had been fortunate to date with perfect weather but as we tucked in to our picnic it started to rain and continued through  our 60km trip back to The Gums, where we found we had to share the facilities with three other groups of caravaners!

Bird Species Total 80

Friday 2nd July

After constant rain all night there was a pause just long enough for us to hitch up and head back along the Leichhardt Way. The pause didn’t last long and the weather deteriorated further as we headed to Miles. With this type of weather my bird count is not likely to improve much and we weren’t tempted to stop in Condamine either.

Although there a couple of free camps around Miles, Michael decided he’d rather be in a real caravan park. Once again we found ourselves between the railway line on one side and the highway on the other, both about 50m away. Luckily the train line seems to be unused and the traffic stopped about 9pm.

Once settled we went in search of a coffee and found Dogwood Crossing@Miles a combined Library and Art Gallery. Currently they have works by local high school students in the foyer. One of them seemed to have done a still life just for Michael. The foyer has a colonnade of 7m tall stylised bottle trees.

The Gallery’s current Exhibition is the Stencil Art Prize a competition of which I had not heard. 

The Stencil Art Prize is an international competition for stencil art that is based in Australia founded in 2009.

An exhibition of finalists and the winning artwork is held in Sydney each year, with the winning stencil artwork acquired by the Stencil Art Prize. 

These were some of my favourites. I loved that the cockatoos were actually done on old Real Estate For Sale signs.

We took a drive to Chinamans Lagoon which is famous for its water lilies (not today) and the beginning of the Creek side walk. We only got about 50m before the rain sent us back to the comfort of the car. We drove out to check out the free campsite at Gil Weir and under drier conditions it would be a great spot.

Michael had noted at checkin that one of the local pubs had a free courtesy bus so we decided it was time to eat out. I just have to remember that an entree size meal is more than sufficient out this way!

Bird Count 82

Saturday July 3rd

After a surprisingly good nights sleep, considering the proximity of the highway, there was no need to rush anywhere. The weather was still dismal so we took advantage of the park laundry before visiting the Miles Historic Village Museum across the road.

Since being opened in 1971 it has grown to have more than 30 buildings as well as a variety of collections including a shell collection and a lapidary display. There is a modern Artesian Basin Centre. For its type of Museum it is very well done and we spent a few hours there. By the end we were both grateful that we life in today’s times and we were pretty sure Bianca wouldn’t be too happy with the birthing suite.

One story that stayed with me was the one about the 11 year old German boy who arrived with his family to work on a property in this region. His mother died during the sea voyage and his father shortly after landing in Brisbane. He then took charge of his 2 younger siblings and they walked the 350 miles to take up the job his father was meant to be doing. Makes our kids seem a bit soft doesn’t it.

I’m sure not too many of my teacher friends would have survived in the job for too long in 1886 either.

As the sun began to set we were very pleased to see indication of an improvement in the weather.

‘Red sky at night

Sailor’s delight’

Not surprisingly there was no increase to the Bird count  today.