Dawn Stetzel / Australia: Narooma/2nd WWOOF place

Narooma / 2nd WWOOF place

Narooma is a city right on the coast, population 8,500, and about 20 minutes north of Tilba Tilba.

Rob, my WWOOF host, has a coffee/espresso machine business and a large garden that needed tending. The vegetable garden also had citrus and avocado trees and one of my first jobs was hauling soil through the neighbor's yard and into the garden.

In the morning I walked outside and was greeted by noisy wild parrots looking for a breakfast handout. I was not quite awake yet, and did not expect this greeting - Rob had not mentioned these parrots - but BOY was this fun to experience!

NO, NOT TOMATOES!

I went inside to find some food for these birds, found some cherry tomatoes, and made an offering. They happily jumped onto my hand and arm, but were NOT HAPPY about the tomatoes. They pecked at them and then shook their feathery heads and jumped away in seeming disgust. It was quite funny.

Rob came in just then and told me that they like sweet things, apples, fruit and especially honey disolved in water. So this is what I tried and they were very happy and very noisly squawking over breakfast.

Just as colorful as the parrots, Rob made frittata with fresh veggies from the garden.

I was able to secure a volunteer position at an Eco/Music Festival in Corrin Banks, near Canberra about 3 hours away from Narooma, so away we went. By volunteering I was able to waive the $200 entrance ticket and they gave me a free meal each day too.

This festival was in a beautiful national park that had a huge forest fire 2 years ago.

Dead trees on the distant mountaintop from the fire 2 years ago.

One of my favorite parts of this festival was a walk that I took through the brush and up the mountain via this dry dusty lane.

This was my spot for my volunteer work at the festival, the front gate taking tickets. I had a blast welcoming all the festival goers and especially the musicians, some very creative people, coming in to perform.

view of the hills and sheep farms from the front gate

This was a crazy team of guys, Wacky and Blotto, performing at the Corrin Bank Festival. It was SO COLD at night here, but I was still able to enjoy the antics , a dry-can't-be-bothered-drunk-grumpy-old-man sort of humor of these two.

a flame thrower, a cow and a can of beer were involved somehow in this segment

Rob and I spent the whole day driving from the Corrin Bank festival back to Narooma. We stopped along the way to enjoy the sites, to explore a park or nature trail or to sit with a cup of tea or snack from the cooler. I think that I liked this bit even better than the festival itself!

I have been hearing Kookaburra birds, very loud succession of sounds more like a monkey howl than a noise that would come out of a beaked bird, and finally saw one sitting on a powerline along the road.

Rob and I are at the edge of a VERY steep cliff looking down at the rocks and rather vicious waves

We walked along this pathway through some of the craziest looking trees, twisted trunks and bumpy bark like from some sort of wizard land. Many of these trees were BANKSIA trees, specifically OLD MAN BANKSIA trees. These had huge hairy upright pod/flower spikes, each one larger than one of my feet.

I was reading a book called, "Grow Your Own Bushfoods" by Keith and Irene Smith...

"These twisted, gnarled trees, with their sharp, sawtooth leaves and grotesque bristly old cones, were the model for the big, bad Banksia Man in Australian author, MAY GIBBS's Snugglepot and Cuddlepie stories." I ran into a copy of the Snugglepot and Cuddlepie books at a local shop on Kangaroo Island and these books are amazing. This author is excellent at using the local flora and fauna of Australia in kid's books in such a magical way. More about author May Gibbs later on...

Old Man Banksia Trees

a Honeyeater bird getting nectar from the Banksia tree flower

These trees were amazing looking - all feathery and wispy from a distance - I would have guessed some kind of pine tree, but later I found out they are SHEOAKS. Sheoaks are trees that mainly grow on rocky slopes, principally along the coast and along river systems. I found out about this tree because I was reading about the GLOSSY BLACK-COCKATOOS that are found in eastern Australia and on Kangaroo Island. They are endangered birds because of habitat loss from agriculture development and nest predation by possums. The Glossies feed on the Sheoak cones - shredding the cones with their powerful bills while turning the cone in their left foot in order to extract the tiny white seed kernels. There is a call for volunteers on Kangaroo Island to help with Glossy Black-Cockatoo nest monitoring and I really want to try to help with this.

solar lighthouse

This trail led to a jutting piece of narrow land, a cliff, a point high up, with water on both sides and the wind rushing around.

grass at Guerilla Bay with some wicked points

Driving back from Canberra, the Corrin Bank Festival, I saw Wild Dagga or Lion's Head that I learned about at Andrew's house, growing wild along the coast.

Moruya River

When we got back to Narooma it was night, but in the morning I said hello to the parrots with a yummy apple.

RAINBOW LORIKEETS

Lorikeets / family Loriidae
distinctive swift-flying, mostly small, green parrots, found only in the Australian region

Driving To Adelaide

Rob and I are headed to the southern coast of Australia, to Adelaide from Narooma, about a 16 hour drive, to check out the arts festivals. We first drive through grassy plains and rolling hillsides with bits of rock outcrops.

This is a spot in between Cooma and Canberra, rolling grasslands around rolling soft looking mountains covered by short trees with white trunks called Snow Gums. Rob mentioned that this is a high snow area and almost the highest elevation in Australia. See the hills in the background of this photo below - we drove through this burnt area with dark sooty skeletons of trees standing on the dry ground - there was a bushfire here 2 years ago and it is hard to see signs of recovery.

In between Cooma and Canberra at Pollocks Creek, an OLD GOLDMINING VILLAGE called Kiandra. Rob and I stopped here to stretch and rest, and I loved to run along these grassy paths soaking up the sun.

KIANDRA GOLDFIELDS in 1859 had 30,000 miners. In 1861 it dwindled to a few hundred. In the 1960's the area was best known for skiing and trout fishing. There was a mining revival in the 1880's until 1900. In the 1930's there were no more than 6 families in Kiandra.

We stopped near Hay to sleep and woke up to a beautiful sunset in a flat barren area with tufts of dry grass and not much else.

The sunrise was great - and as it rose it brought this oddity - odd to have SO MANY flies around - flies and nothing else.

Here are wild emu along the road. I think there were about 5 or 6 in this group. I also saw my first Wedgetail eagle right around here sitting on the ground. And then later Rob and I saw a wild dingo, a beautiful graceful dog-face staring intently at us from the side of the road. Rob was delighted as he had never seen a wild dingo up so close.

entering fruit land - a dry dusty area growing grapes for wine and table grapes

table grape vines in the distance and a roadside stand selling grapes via honor system - the grapes were absolutely amazing - best I have ever had - $3 for a bunch and yum-yum was it good that we stopped to try them

It was so very dry in this area - so dry and not much growing - I saw several whirl-wind dust storms carrying red soil from the fields up into a funnel shaped pink fuzzy cloud. I don't know why all the farmers have plowed their fields making all this dust ready to be carried off by the wind.

We stopped along the road and I saw this bit of shade and a magpie standing under this tree. I walked up to get a better look at this beautiful bird and he did not want to move from his cool spot. He kept ducking away from me, but did not want to fly back out into the heat. He continued to shuffle, hiding behind the tree trunk as I moved, just like he was saying....if I don't look at her maybe she'll go away.

We are entering a FRUIT FLY BAN ZONE so no carrying fruit across - we stop before the barricade to squash the remainder of our yummy grapes into a grape juice to drink so we don't have to chuck all of our fruit into the disposal bin.