Location: Manning Valley
Date: May 2011

May 24, 2011. Took a half hour drive out past Tinonee to Bootawa Dam, which supplies treated fresh water to the Manning Valley as well as the Great Lakes, servicing a total population of about 100,000 or so. I arrived early in order to take an unhurried look around and photograph a bit of this and that. As I stood on top of the hill overlooking the dam, I felt the cold wind penetrating my track top. It was rather brisk despite the sunshine.

Anyway, there wasn't a helluva lot to see. Bootawa sure ain't no Warragamba, Snowy or Hoover lemme tellya. It's a bloody pond. A pretty big pond, but a pond nonetheless. So I wandered around for a bit and then headed further along the road to the Water Treatment Plant, where I was booked in for a tour - and a free lunch! I pressed the red button at the gate and discovered that I was early... about an hour early! So the guy suggested I go for a bit of a drive around the area and come back later.

I took a dirt road through farmland for a while and then joined up with the main road back to Tinonee. Not that I was aware of it. I have a terrible sense of direction and, for all I knew, I could have been headed to Tasmania. But the sky was turning pretty cloudy and there were a few spits of rain, so I thought about the tour of the water treatment plant and concluded that it would be mostly indoors, which meant flash photography, and most of the shots would be of pipes and dials and all kinds of boring scientific stuff. By the time I reached the outskirts of Tinonee, which meant I was on my way back to Taree, I decided to abandon the tour and head home. And here I am. And yes, it's raining outside.

But I did get a few pics of the dam and surrounding countryside, which are not terribly thrilling but quite pleasant. Click here for the photo album.