A Walk in the Flowers

Floriade is Canberra's Festival of Flowers.








Each year for about 4 weeks from mid-September to mid-October the gardens of Commonwealth Park are a blaze of colour as thousands of tulips, bluebells, violas and other flowers bloom.











Floriade began in 1988 when the Dutch Government donated thousands of bulbs to the nation's capital for the bicentennial celebrations.

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This morning we spent a very enjoyable couple of hours just wandering along the paths looking at the flowers, taking in the ambiance and taking plenty of photos.  The tradition has been maintained over the past 25 years and it's now an established fixture in the Canberra springtime calendar.  New gardens are planted each year with mass plantings illustrating a theme.  This year the theme is "Reflection: and the garden beds are planted to show iconic symbols of war and peace and are floral tributes to the 100th anniversary of the ANZAC landings at Gallipoli in 1915.

It's been a few years since we visited Floriade - we used to make the trip most years over the October long weekend when we lived in Sydney - and it was good to get back.


After our walk around Floriade we drove through Reid and past the house where Robert grew up.

Springtime in Canberra

Canberra in springtime is beautiful.  There are many blossom trees in bloom and the native wildflowers are a picture.  We spent a morning walking around the National Botanic Gardens looking at our beautiful native plants and flowers.







At this time of year it's a beautiful place to be and because it was a sunny day in the school holidays there were plenty of people around.  It's water dragon season, we saw 18 0f them, mostly sunning themselves on rocks around the rockpool.

We called into the orchid house which had plenty of blooms.  The perfume of the orchid flowers was very strong.  We walked back to the carpark through the misty rainforest.

South to Canberra

After we left Mullumbimby in northern NSW we headed to the cooler climes of Canberra.  As we headed south we were glad of our warm doona and diesel heater to keep us warm.  It might be springtime but the nights can still be frosty.

We spent a couple of nights at Urunga, 30km south of Coffs Harbour, on the mid-north coast where we caught up with family and friends.  We walked out to the headland along the boardwalk which borders the mangroves.  The caravan park is home to many "pet" rabbits.

At Port Macquarie we turned inland, through Wauchope and  and up into the Great Dividing Range to Apsley Falls.  There are many great walks around the gorge and overlooking these spectacular falls.  As we walked we were serenaded by the many birds and our eyes feasted on the beautiful wildflowers.

Once onto the tablelands we were into farming country again.  The canola is coming into full bloom and many of the paddocks were bright yellow, as if someone had tipped yellow paint over them.  We drove through to Young, hoping to see some of the orchards in blossom but we were a bit early - by now they should be beautiful.






Then it was on to the twin towns of Murrumburrah-Harden where we had lunch.  There's an impressive memorial to the 1st Australian Light Horse from WWI.





We arrived in Canberra in mid-afternoon and just relaxed as we waited for our family to arrive home.

BOG Muster 2015, Mullumbimby

The Bushtracker Owner Group (BOG) has a "Muster" each year where owners of Bushtracker caravans get together for social events, workshops, catch up with friends and generally have a good time.  The muster is in a different state each year and we attended our first in Rydal, NSW in 2012 when our caravan was only a few weeks old.  Since then we've been to Alice Springs, NT (2013), Nabawa, WA (2014), and now Mullumbimby, NSW (2015).  Next year we'll plan to get to Winton, QLD.  Each muster has a theme and this year it was "Blues Brothers".

The 10 days we spent with our Bushtracker friends were filled with social events.  We had delicious Spit Roast Dinner, Breakfast on the beach at nearby Brunswick Heads where we watched some whales playing not far from shore.  We socialised over a Trivia Night and had a delicious Dinner catered by the local CWA ladies (Country Womens' Association).

Cherryl organised a visit to the Madura Tea Estate which was popular.  We've been there a couple of times before and this time we were joined by 40 BOGgers.  We learned about how tea is grown in the area - there are only 3 regions in Australia where tea is grown, 2 in Far North Queensland (Nerada and Daintree Tea) and Madura in the beautiful Tweed Valley.  After our tour of the estate and gardens we toured the factory where both loose tea and tea bags are made.

On our way back to Mullumbimby we stopped off at the Tumbulgum Tavern for morning tea/lunch before making our way to nearby Murwillumbah to visit the Tweed Regional Art Gallery which houses the Margaret Olley Art Centre.  Margaret Olley is an iconic Australian Artist who came from the Tweed Valley and lived in Sydney at the time of her death a few years ago.  Some of the rooms from her Paddington home have been recreated in this Gallery.

Mullumbimby is home to the Spaghetti Circus and each year in September the town hosts the Australian Circus Festival.  Circus performers from all over Australia converge on this little town to learn and practise new tricks and perform for each other and the public.  The local Spaghetti Circus performers, all children, were practising during our muster and they invited us to be the audience for one of their final rehearsals.  We all enjoyed the performance and the rain held off as we sat under the stars.

After 10 days of socialising with our BOG friends, we packed up, said goodbye to the pair of kookaburras that had been keeping us entertained and set off for the trip south through NSW to Canberra.

Back in New South Wales

After spending a very relaxing few days at Lake Broadwater we ventured further south towards the NSW border.  We drove through green cotton fields, through Cecil Plains and Millmerrin, where we've camped on earlier visits, to Yelarbon, about 50km east of Goondiwindi.

We camped at the Yelarbon Recreation Grounds campsite - $15 per night for a powered site.  The Getaway Caravan Club from Brisbane were there and they invited us to join in with their Fathers' Day barbecue celebrations.  Yelarbon has a lovely lagoon and several nice walks and drives.  It's proximity to Goondiwindi makes it a good place to stay for a few days.

From Yelarbon we drove to Warwick where we had our new Dexter Anti-Sway System adjusted, stocked up the cupboards and filled the fuel tank.  Then we crossed into NSW, driving along windy mountain roads to Woodenbong.  We camped at the Woodenbong Campground - $10 per night for a powered site.  We're in Yowie Country, the Australian version of the American Bigfoot and the Himalayan Yeti.  The only ones we saw were the tourist version.


The countryside around Woodenbong is beautiful.  We took a day trip to the Tooloom Falls.  There's a great free camp at the falls - one to keep on the list.  Spring has arrived and the flowers are starting to bloom.

When we returned from our trip to the falls, we were joined by Bushtracker friends for the final leg of our trip to Mullumbimby for the Bushtracker Owner Group (BOG) Muster.  We stopped off at Kyogle for morning tea.