Gold

Glenda and family had to be in Canberra today for a family commitment, so we took the opportunity to go back to Mogo and do the gold mine tour.

We had a go at panning, where you repeatedly wash through river stones and grit, to leave the gold behind in the pan. This only works because the gold is much heavier than the rest and so stays behind in the pan.

We saw the quartz-crushing machine, which reduced the quartz, and the gold therein, to dust. There was then a hazardous process involving both mercury and arsenic, to separate out the gold. Unsurprisingly, miners' life expectancy was short. The people who made the best living were the saloon keepers.

Conditions were pretty basic, for the miners anyway, the nicer buildings being the preserve of the church and the saloon. The barber was a man of many skills: tooth puller, apothecary, and (if that didn't work) undertaker.

Only 88,000 tons of gold have been mined, ever, and only about1% of that was in the form of nuggets. It is believed that there are ten million tons in the oceans, if only someone could find a sensible way of getting at it. But since gold's value depends on its scarcity, it's perhaps best they don't.

Moruya

Today the weather was perfect, 26°, clear blue skies, so we drove out to Moruya. This is a regional centre, and a substantial town by local standards, though small by ours. There is a Courthouse, the Council offices, banks, all the stuff you'd associate with a County Town in England. One broad street, Vulcan  Street, through the middle, very reminiscent of small-town America.

The name Moruya is said to be Aboriginal dialect for 'home of the black swan'. This may or may not be true, but what is true is that there is a quarry here where they sourced the granite used to build Sydney Harbour Bridge. We walked along the Moruya river for a bit; pelicans on the water, budgies in the trees, cockatoos in the shade.

The river meets the sea at Moruya Heads, so we drove down there to have a look at the beach. This is stunning: miles of flat sand, a bit of a surf up. A few kids down there after school, with short boards. The pic gives a flavour.

More anon.

Trampoline

Spent Saturday morning helping Trevor dismantle the old trampoline and swing frame, and in their place construct a new trampoline. This arrived, not from Hungary, in three heavy boxes. With much grunting, hunting for missing screws, and helpful comments from Owen, the task was accomplished by lunch time (if you stretch the definition of lunch time a bit). 

Attaching the springs was very difficult; to attach one opposite another you have to disconnect the first one, which leaves you the same problem, only the other way round. When we'd finished, out of curiosity, we had a look at the instructions, which said "this task requires two adults in good physical condition". That would be it, then.

Talking of parcels, Trevor said the Oz postal service is pretty poor. Parcels from Europe take four days, a parcel he sent to his daughter in Melbourne took ten days to get there.

Facts and figures

The area where we're staying, Bateman's Bay, is both a town and an area. The town (pop 17,500) sits at the mouth of the Clyde river, about 170 miles south of Sydney. Thought to be named for Nathaniel Bateman, captain of the HMS Nortumberland when Cook was serving as her master in the 1760s, the town has most things you need, supermarket, ATMS, petrol station, It's about 7km from Surf Beach where we're based.

The area is really a string of small towns, bays, coves, and beaches running miles to the south. There's not much in the way of industry here, being mainly a holiday and retirement area, but it seems reasonably prosperous without being flash. Most people are content with a Holden (as General Motors cars are marketed over here), but there are a few small Japanese cars, and SUVs where there is a boat in the drive. We've seen very few German cars. The whole area is heavily wooded which in nice but brings fire risk in the summer. We're at the start of autumn now so it’s pretty quiet and the roads are nearly empty.

Clubs, societies and voluntary organisations abound. My Probus chums will be interested to know there is a Probus Club in Bateman's Bay, but it's part of the Rotary. There's a picture in the local free paper showing a bunch of them, many in bush hats. You can't see their legs but I'd bet most are in shorts too. Gambling is endemic and seems to be the basis of much of the leisure industry.

They do like to trumpet the provenance of food and wine whenever it is either locally-produced, or just Australian, which much of it is. Most fruits can be grown here, and most meat is local.

Rainfall here is double that at home, but with fewer rainy days. In any given season, the temperature is probably 10 degrees higher than it would be at home. Autumn generally is the nicest season, though we seem to have hit a rainy patch this year.

The Hungarian Oven

Trevor and Glenda recently had their kitchen refitted, and a fine new AEG oven was shipped out from Hungary and installed. The only thing is, it doesn't work, but stubbornly displays the error code F136 instead. AEG say they are mystified as their error codes don't go that high. The vendor has agreed to ship out another oven so they're waiting for that, and hoping it works.

Anyway, Friday night is pizza-and-movie night, and you really need an oven for the pizzas. Glenda makes them herself, and very good they are too. The bases are made fresh by the local baker, and the mozzarella and everything else is sourced locally. They're cooked on stones, currently in the oven in our apartment; our presence complicates the numbers and means that the number of pizzas required exceeds the number of stones available, so they're being cooked in shifts, with a runner going over the road periodically to see how they're doing. This worked fine.

The movie part of the evening was The Sapphires ( basically The Commitments, only with women), and this was followed by National Rugby League, in which Manly Sea Eagles knocked lumps off Sydney City Roosters, and vice versa. Curiously, although it's a national league, there's very little Rugby League played outside of NSW and Queensland, with none at all in SA, NT, or WA.

If there is news on the oven I'll be sure to tell you.

It didn't exactly brighten up today but at least it stopped raining. We had lunch with Glenda and Trevor at the Catalina Country Club, basically a 27 hole golf club with decent catering and the inevitable pokies ( see earlier post). Had a taste of barramundi, which is a sporting fish (enjoys a game of darts I expect) and not bad either. Trevor had to go back to do his school bus run, so we drove down to Broulee to see what was going on. The surf wasn't great but there was a clutch of surfers out.

We went on to Mogo, which (if you haven't been paying attention) is an 1850s gold rush town, now largely shacks selling arts and crafts - ceramics, leather, beads,etc - some genuine, some sadly made in China. There's a bit of new age crap like tarot readings and psychic meditation as well, but we found a nice working pottery and bought a little pot to bring home.

Rain

Sydney has double the annual rainfall of London, but fewer rainy days, so when it does rain it doesn't  mess about. Today is such a day. Our neighbours are pleased, as their garden is dry, but they haven't travelled 12,000 miles to escape from weather like this. Our road, Eric Fenning Drive, is currently Eric Fenning River. I have a useful app on my iPad where I can see local and national radar and satellite views of Australia, and all the State capitals except Hobart currently have their own low pressure systems. The good news is that it's going to clear up after tomorrow.

We'd promised John we'd visit his woodwork shed - more correctly the Eurobodalla Woodcraft Guild Inc - which is at Mogo, a few miles from here, so we did. The rain was torrential, with visibility about the same as in a car wash, but we went anyway. They had lathes, belt sanders, sawing machines, all the stuff you'd expect, all financed through membership fees, sales, and odd bits of commissioned work.

Most of the timber they pick up as off cuts or find lying about. I suspect the guild is 50% social club, though, as my keen eye detected evidence of tea and cake.

Mogo itself is an old gold rush town, dating from 1851 when gold was found there. The old part of the town is preserved as a tourist attraction where you can pan for gold (you generally find a flake or two), but the town proper, with a population of 257 at the last census, has become an arts and crafts centre,  with more art galleries than many larger places. There's a pottery, and botanical gardens just along the way, so when it stops raining we'll maybe come back.