Location: Manning Valley
Date: April 2010

April 23, 2010. Yesterday, I took a little drive out to Dumaresque Island in the middle of the Manning River. It's a farming community with just a few roads and no shops... flat as a pancake. I saw only one other car there. Crossing the Manning at Cundletown is a relatively new bridge. Nearby is my favorite fig tree, a whopper which I've yet to photograph successfully. I followed one of the two main roads to its end and saw a sign PRIVATE PROPERTY, TRESSPASSERS WILL BE PROSECUTED. Hmmm. I risked being drilled full of holes by a shotgun and photographed an old cottage at the entrance to the property. Looks like it's been there since the late 19th century and is overgrown with weeds. Leaning against the side of the building is a painted sign supported by two posts that would have been the original pedestrian entrance, but it's faded now and unreadable.

From there, I followed the road to the other side of the island (north) and came across the massive concrete supports for the upgraded Pacific Highway where it crosses the Manning River and Dumaresque Island. The huge structure was in stark contrast to the peaceful fields of grazing cattle. All in all, quite an interesting little deviation from the relative rush and bustle of Taree. Click here for the photo album.

April 16, 2010. Here's another montage of things that have been happening around the hood, some right outside my front door. The roadworks guys were back with a vengeance and even bigger machinery! Some of the roadworks pics are not in chronological order - sorry about that - but you get the idea. Chris and Adrian, Taree's best known fence builders, general handymen and tall-story tellers, were back erecting the side fence to this house. The previous one was post and rail but this one is colorbond panels. So the excitement around here never stops, folks. Chris thought it was gonna be a piece of cake and hired a post-hole digger. Oops! The soil is as tough as old boots, rubble, full of stones and tree roots, so he had to go back to the manual digger - poor old bugger. Boo boo #2 was disturbing the main waterpipe, so he had to get a plumber to fix the problem. However, the job finally got done and it looks a treat. Other pics include the empty carpark at the Mall on Easter Sunday, a couple of knots on the timber wall in my kitchen that look like ET, an old derelict house just down the road from here, and another pelican doing the hey-check-me-out-aren't-I-gorgeous trick. Click here for the photo album.