Day 2 of the trip north.

No Entries and Control Checking

Day 2 started with a cooked breakfast at Rodney’s with toast made from his delicious home made bread and eggs from “ his girls”.

After packing up, and a quick tour of the garden, we were off around 10- just in time to see his next visitors arriving (some people from NSW chasing up on family history in the local area).

The butterflies were already warming up near the Lantana

and Rodney showed us the milkweed plant that the caterpillars love so much (it now looks very chewed)

and a few late caterpillars who were still trying to stock up on the last of the goodness from it before also becoming beautiful butterflies.

We took the road via Blyth, Brinkworth and White Cliffs reserve

before joining up with Horrocks Highway just after Yacka.

Rodney had told us that there is a new road out from Wirrabara that allows you to drive to Bluff lookout (at the top of the range). It sounded good and would give us a good potential lunch stop so we aimed for the Wirrabara forest next.

Unfortunately our plans were foiled by a closure for feral animal control, so we will have to try again another time.

The sign certainly made it look worth the drive.

We had lunch at the new forest picnic ground instead. They have a couple of good shelters, toilets and bbqs.

We also stopped at the historic nursery site and read that this and nearby Bundaleer were the birthplace of Australian plantation forestry! They used bamboo tubes to raise their tiny trees – one seed plus some soil in each bamboo, which was then planted out when the seedlings grew.

There was a lovely old wood table and profusely flowering gum among the other treasures at the old nursery site

The next step was Melrose, where we hoped to check all the control sites on two maps-one on the bike tracks above the town (ups and downs) and the other out at the Showgrounds. Both of these have permanent markers attached at the control location. Sometimes the markers go missing. We’ve been to most of them together on a previous checking trip, but since we had a lot to do and not much time we decided to split up today. I dropped Trevor off to do the hilly ones and headed for the Showgrounds.

You could see the popularity of mountain-biking in this town. A thriving mountain- bike cafe and the bright orange signage for tracks, with even a Strava “ king of the mountain” sign.

I managed my checking without trouble and returned to meet up with Trev again an hour and a half later. My only excitement was a rather large and beautiful snake taking shelter from the rain under the verandah (as was I) . We gave each other a wide berth.

Trevor still had a number of sites to check so I dropped him off part way up the hill and drove back to the lookout, leaving the car and heading out to check one on the spur of the next hill. In hindsight we should have left the car at the bottom probably. The rain was becoming heavier as we worked, so we both arrived back from this venture quite damp, but with the job accomplished. Sadly I had the keys so Trev had to wait for me in the rain. There is one control that needs replacing. With rain still falling and not a lot of day left we decided it wasn’t a job for today.

We headed for our cosy cabin in Laura, driving out from under the rain clouds as we went. Laura had only had a very light sprinkling early in the day. We picked up some giant twins (icecream with chocolate coating) as we checked in at the caravan park. This is, after all, the home of Golden North Icecream- the best in the world.