postcards

I'm in a postcard and ATC birthday swap group with other members of Stitchin' Fingers.....
Luckily I was up to date with my postcards and ATC's before my hand went mad.......these are some of those I've made ready to post later in the year. 

and some book pages.............
I'm involved in a fabric book page swap with 8 other girls. We're all members of Stitchin' Fingers and we've nominated our own topic for the swap. Mine is "Travel". Each page is 8" x 8" and we include a little pocket on the back with information about how we've made the page, i.e. fabric used, threads etc.

 I received this one from Frances from Queensland.

this is the back of the page. It's handmade silk paper with photos printed on fabric.
Frances does beautiful silk paper.

This is the front of the page. 

 I received this page from Susie in the USA. It's cotton fabric printed with all sorts of travel mementoes and Susie has embellished it beautifully.

This is the back. 

end of the month

Almost the end of the first half of the year already, time really does fly. We've been in Brisbane for the last few weeks helping our daughter move house......big task & that's all I'm saying about that !!
I've been a bit frustrated also as I had yet another skin cancer burnt off. This time on my right hand and it got infected and became quite nasty. My hand swelled up to twice its size and became completely immobile and was very sore. Lots of antibiotics and dressings later, I can finally use it but in a restricted mode. I think I was more annoyed I couldn't do any stitching, didn't care about cooking and dishes, that was the benefit of it....hopefully in another few days I'll have complete use back.
We did do a trip to the botanical gardens in Brisbane.... I'm used to the more English style of garden down south so it was nice to see different plants....not a lot of flowers being winter I suppose, but lots of greenery.
Thought I'd show you some photos of a beautiful national park we visited in NSW before we arrived in Queensland. Australia has some magnificent national parks, this one's Kwiamba and the rock formations were awesome.

Pilliga

We spent a couple of days at the Pilliga Bore Baths. This is a free camp just outside the township of Pilliga, and I use the word "township" loosely, it maybe has a few houses, a cafe & not much else. The artesian water is warm and is piped directly into the pool and is beautiful to sit in and relax, some believe it has healing properties for arthritis and aching limbs, but I just enjoy the warm relaxing feeling.
From here, we went for a drive to Burren Junction some 40 klms away. My Mum's brother and his wife were the licencees for the NSW Railway Refreshment Rooms from the 50's/60's until they closed down in 1979 and I was curious to find out some history. My Aunt & Uncle have both died, I didn't know them because we lived so far away from them, but the fact I was so close to the place they'd lived for so long, was a bit of a drawcard. I managed to talk to an old timer who knew him very well and found out some information....he showed me the first house they'd lived in before they moved to railway accomodation. It was nice to have some form of connection. The Refreshment rooms have long been pulled down but we did some scavenging around the area and found some broken pieces of china with the NSW railways stamp on them. Burren Junction is a very dilapadated place now with probably about 100 people living there, some of them seasonal due to grain or cotton production.

Today (2nd June) is only the second day we've had rain, much needed by the farmers now sowing the grain crops. But it didn't deter us, the weather might have been damp, but not cold.

Pelicans were always on the lookout for fish in the lagoon in the next padddock.

The lagoon at sunset......beautiful, isn't it?

This is the pool

We didn't bother putting out the awning as we only were there a couple of days. Those dark clouds in the background disappeared during the day as the breeze picked up and dried out the ground.

Tottenham.

Tottenham is another small town surrounded by farmland. Not much here, but the caravan park was in a very pretty setting and was exceptionally clean and offered very good value....$16 p.n. or pay for 3 nights and stay for 4, so we decided to stay and catch up on the domestics. I have to confess I'm addicted to an Australian television series on Sunday nights called "A Place to Call Home". Its only a short series, and as luck would have it, it was on the night we decided to stay at Tottenham.......what a coincidence !!!!
Caught up on the washing & boring stuff and I also caught up on some embroidery. I'm a member of an internet stitching site and within that, a member of 3 different swap groups......a birthday fabric postcard group, a birthday ATC ( Artist Trading Cards) group and a fabric book page group.....so I had 5 ATC's to make to complete the year and a book page for the month of May. I finished all those and posted off the book page to a girl in India, so I felt quite content that for once I was in front!!!
I'll post photos of them when the recipients let me know they've received them.
We also did our usual walk around the town....we've been very lucky with the weather, we've had beautiful days, some cold nights and except for one day, no rain at all.

I liked these mosaic seats and wall art depicting the lifestyle of Tottenham. Very clever & cute.

When we were driving to Pilliga, we passed through the townships of Warren & Coonamble. While Warren is a decent sized town, Coonamble is not a place I need to go back to. Most of the main street shops are empty and the town looks like it is slowly dying.
Just before we arrived in Warren, we passed by the biggest cotton production I've seen. It was massive, not just the enormous paddocks, but the whole industry. There are hundreds of thousands of acres out here in central west NSW devoted to cotton production and when the cotton season is over, any one who sows wheat, immediately launches into sowing and planting the seeds. I guess if you have the land & both crops, you'd never have a break!!!

Apparently this year hasn't been a bumper cotton crop but because there is a new and faster way of picking & baling the cotton, the gins can't keep up with the processing and so some limits have been introduced on a rotation basis. And there are thousands of bales sitting in paddocks.

Cruising down the road we saw a sign pointing to a side road with a "Utes in the Paddock" billboard. Intrigued we set off to see what it was all about. As the photos below show, there are numerous Holden utes turned into works of art by some if the country's best artists.
The owners of the property went on a trip to USA and were impressed by the memorabilia displayed on Route 66 and the amount of tourists stopping to see it, so they thought about how they could get people to visit the central west and what better way than the iconic Aussie ute, absolutely necessary on any farm. And this is the result of their efforts.

Aussie sense of humour at its best !!

More news

Unfortunately, I haven't always had internet service where we've been staying, so I'm doing my blog on an app I've downloaded onto my iPad and am posting it to the blog when I get service. I apologise if these entries land all at once.

Before we stayed at Tullibigeal, we stayed for a few days at Hay, a bigger rural town servicing the surrounding areas and situated on the Murrumbidgee river. Hay has an interesting history. We visited the Shearing Hall of Fame in the outskirts of the town and it was very informative, interesting sound displays and a shearing demonstration amongst other things. The shearers of past days are credited with forming the Australian Workers Union which was the beginning of the Australian Labor Party, one of our two major political parties and the current Government. In the 1800's, the shearers held a 10 month strike because the farmers, (commonly called "cockies" in Australia) wanted to reduce the price they were paid per sheep. The farmers employed other workers to combat the shearers provoking them and the result was often violent confrontations between the two. After the strike, the two parties reached an agreement and have really only had two major confrontations since.

Hay is also on the path of "The Long Paddock", an Australian reference to droving cattle long distances in search of feed in times of drought and to fatten them up before taking them to market. The Long Paddock stretched from Wilcannia in the west of NSW to Moama on the NSW/Victorian border of the Murray River, a total of 610 klms. There was a safe river crossing at Hay, as long as the river wasn't swollen.************************

The old railway carriages at the historical railway station hold a museum to the "Dunera Boys" and the internment camps during WW2. The Dunera Boys were a group of about 1800 German & Austrian Jewish men who escaped to England before the war. Once England declared war with Germany, these men were rounded up as possible enemy aliens and were told they were being sent to Canada, and they boarded the ship "The Dunera" believing this, but were shipped to Australia. They were sent to Hay and were joined by others from Australia, Italians, Japanese and were held in internment camps for some time, before being sent elsewhere. These men were, for the most part, learned scholars, teachers, and the like and a lot of them stayed in Australia after the war, thus enriching our institutions with their knowledge and teaching abilities. The Italians of course could make wine and were very keen gardeners and the camps were totally self sufficient and also supplied some produce to the surrounding areas. Very interesting story....there was a movie some time ago about "The Dunera Boys" and I think there may have been a book too.
On another note, the local high school had a memorial museum to all the soldiers in all wars who had come from Hay. It was very inspiring and a credit to the school that they place such importance and pride in their sons.

Catching up....again !!

So picking up from when I last posted.....we did indeed head south to pick up the van and as we thought, head for the west. But it didn't quite work out that way......

We celebrated my 60th birthday with family & friends on 11th April at a cute little pub in the country town where one of my sister's lives. Had a great night....that was a Thursday & on the following Saturday, we had a day out with the second and third generation at the Werribee Zoo. This zoo is based on the plains of South Africa with safari buses taking us around to see the animals. It was great fun with the littlies having a ball. I was so grateful & lucky my nieces & nephews came along with their children. I have a wonderful family.

I made a dash back to Queensland after that to have a couple of skin cancers removed from my face, so had another opportunity to stay with Rebecca. Then back to Victoria to meet up with Richard & head off. When we were in Byron Bay back in February, our awning took a bit of a beating from a rogue wind, so we decided to get it fixed while I was in Queensland and we also had a couple of modifications done to the van at the same time. The repair yard assured us we'd be on the road by the 27th April, but we'll know about the well laid plans of mice & men, don't we ?

We finally got going on the 8th of May, but again got waylaid with some family business, so decided to postpone the trip to the west until next year. We really felt we were running out of time to see the state properly, so decided to head north instead & we've decided to go to Darwin in the Northern Territory, commonly referred to as "The Top End".

We've been taking our time getting there and are currently in central NSW where we've been lucky enough to strike not only some great people but also some fantastic weather.

 camping on the Murrumbidgee River

Is there anything better than a campfire on a chilly evening?

We've been staying at little towns along the way.....this area of NSW is farming, mostly wheat and mixed crops but also sheep and a few cattle. The farms are vast and the paddocks seem to go on forever. It's sowing time now and a few days ago when they had some good soaking rain, the tractors were working overtime to get the seeds into the ground.

A lot of the towns out here are struggling for various reasons....young people leave, farms get sold, people retire and move to bigger communities but we came across what looked like a forgotten town.......Tullibigeal... it only had a pub, a co-op, & a cafe which also sold newspapers and had a post office agency. They had a great site set aside for caravans with new amenities, free power & water to encourage visitors. Boy, were we surprised by the community spirit in this town. 

We were lucky enough to arrive the day before they had "The World's Longest Morning Tea'....this is a fund raising function held all over Australia at various times during the year to raise money for cancer research. It had rained the day before and the farmers were unable to get into the paddocks until the next day, so they accompanied their wives into town to partake in the morning tea. There were lots of people there and the cakes and slices baked by those wonderful country cooks were delicious. For a donation you could have as many cuppas and as much food as you liked. 

I was beside myself.....the tough decision on what to have.....and of course, there was the cake stall as well. I can tell you several things went back to my biscuit & cake tins in the caravan!!

The people were super friendly and we sat for quite a while chatting to them. They invited us to join them at the pub on the Friday night for "a drink, a raffle & a feed". We did go, but when we got there the meals had been cancelled because the cook was sick !! Only in the country !!

 Some of the friendly locals

 The cake stall

Some of the morning tea goodies with Richard contemplating what to have next !!

We had a lovely few days here & will visit again.