Sydney’s convict past

Here is a very good travel piece on Sydney’s convict past, by Tony Perrotet, published in the New York Times on 31 December 2010.

Travelling North

About three weeks ago I had occasion to visit the nation’s capital for the launch of Australia 21’s book Resilience and Transformation: Preparing Australia for Uncertain Futures (see Australia21 book launch and forum), preceded by a forum on the application of resilience to public policy, and followed by a board meeting.

I then headed off to Armidale for a meeting of the members of the non-profit company that has been since the start of the year a part of the new governance framework of The Armidale School (TAS).

The Qantas excursion from Canberra to Armidale via Sydney was a window on two very different Australias that rub along happily enough. The B737 from Canberra to Sydney was full of politicians, lobbyists, military people, all the sorts of people who have occasion to travel between the nation’s largest city and its capital. I was sitting next to a naval officer who was talking to his civilian travelling companion about this and that, including some very favourable commentary about the Chief of the Defence Force (with which I happened to agree).

A short walk from the main domestic terminal to the regional terminal in Sydney and I am sitting on a Dash-8 surrounded by country folk, sitting alongside fit, bronzed men chatting quietly about the characteristics of stud sheep they own.

I had decided while I was so far north of Melbourne and back on home turf I would take advantage of the opportunity to drop down to the North Coast of NSW and catch up with an old university friend who has a macadamia farm outside Macksville. “Drop down” is not as easy as it might sound – public transport between the Tablelands and the Coast is a pretty scarce resource, certainly nothing on a Sunday.

My friend kindly offered to come up to Armidale and collect me, and over the next few days we took in a few touristic experiences that are worth sharing.

The first was the series of exhibitions at the New England Regional Art Museum that I described in NERAM’s Gruner Exhibition. I had heard about the Gruner exhibition in chit-chat the night before, and thought it worth a look, which is was.

Our journey to Macksville then took us along the “Waterfall Way”, the road that takes one via Dorrigo down Dorrigo Mountain to Bellingen.  Close to the main road are the Wollomombi and Hillgrove Gorges, and Ebor Falls, and we decided to take the time to have a look at Wollomombi and Ebor Falls.

According to the World Waterfall Database of the 100 best waterfalls (see here), Wollomombi Falls, about 40 km east of Armidale in the Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, drops a total of 424 metres (1392 feet), its highest single drop being 260 metres (852 feet).  Directly across the gorge from the main viewing point is the less well known Chandler Falls (220 metres). Together these falls flow into the Chandler River which is part of the Macleay River system, which flows through Kempsey and meets the sea at Southwest Rocks.

 

A few hundred metres along from the main parking, picnic and viewing area is Checks Lookout, which provides a different perspective on the falls and is well worth the walk. For the fit, a walk that is allegedly 1.4 km from the main parking area takes you to the Chandler River at the bottom of the gorge, but be warned, this is very steep, winding its way back and forth across the face of the gorge, so distances on the map do not have much meaning.

This is Judith Wright country – the famous poet’s childhood home, Wallamumbi Station, is just opposite the entrance to the falls, on the left hand side of the Waterfall Way heading towards the coast.  This is all Wright country.  Philip Arundel Wright, Judith’s father, was born at Wongwibinda a little to the north, on the edge of the escarpment, and Wallamumbi was his headquarters. Wallamumbi and Jeogla had been in the family hands since 1900 and 1901 respectively, and “P.A” as he was always known around Armidale loved that wild gorge country – so much so that he led a successful campaign to have 14,000 ha of State Forest gazetted as the New England National Park in 1934.

About another 40km from Wollomombi Falls is Ebor Falls, only about 500 metres off the road, at the edge of the Guy Fawkes River National Park.  Ebor Falls is a gem, actually two gems about 600 metres apart. The upper falls take the form of two “blocks” – cascades that are wider than they are high – and the lower falls is a classic “plunge” – a direct drop without contact with the rocks.  You can walk between the two segments along the edge of the gorge, and get wonderful views of the falls, of the gorge, and of the Guy Fawkes River valley running north through its deep gorge, ultimately flowing into the Clarence.  I have been through that country on foot, in 1959, when a party of 15 cadets from The Armidale School, led by the redoubtable Des Harrison (see Remembering Des Harrison) and Jock McDiarmid (see On the trail of Jock McDiarmid), marched overland from Armidale to Grafton.

Beyond Ebor is Dorrigo, on the top of the escarpment, and a drop down a steep winding road through the rainforest which takes you from the Tablelands to the coastal strip alongside the Bellinger River in about seven miles.

After a day mooching about on the farm we drove to Nambucca for a look at the wonderful view up and down the coast and a walk along the beach. We went to the Captain Cook Lookout to take in the view, and really cracked the jackpot – there were two or three pods of whales close inshore, large numbers of them regularly breaking the surface.  Regrettably my trusty Canon SLR and 80-300mm lens were back in Melbourne – for reasons of carry-on baggage management I had decided to leave them behind for a trip to familiar haunts and just rely on my Samsung WS500 which is a wonderful utility camera but lacks the capabilities of a digital SLR, and in bright sunshine the LCD screen is a bit of a tragedy – all one could do is point and shoot and hope for the best. I am posting here the best of the near misses, plus a severe crop of one photo in which I did manage to catch a fin breaking the surface. Oh for the SLR on high speed and high resolution – never again will I leave it behind.

I had however brought with me some pocket binoculars, so was able to get a good view of the inshore pods. More exciting, with the aid of the binoculars we could see that there was a mass migration of great whales taking place further out to sea, spanning at least a 120 degree arc of the horizon. Watching that great natural event take place was truly breathtaking, especially as I am old enough to remember people wondering what ever would become of Byron Bay with the closure of the whaling station for lack of whales.

On the third day, we went back up the mountain for a walk with my friend’s bushwalking group in the Dorrigo National Park.  This is a substantial remnant of Gondwana Rainforest, in real rainforest country – Dorrigo receives on average 2000mm (80 inches) of rain per year. Far-sighted locals had been keeping the loggers at bay since about 1903, and the 6.8 km circuit of the Wonga Walk on which we did our walk was first laid down as an unemployment relief project in the 1930s. 

Within an hour of the Rainforest Centre just off the Waterfall Way on the coast side of Dorrigo you can visit four types of rainforest – subtropical, warm temperate, cool temperate and dry.

Wonga Walk, in the subtropical zone, is a beautiful way to spend about 2½ hours. There are magnificent old tallowwood trees, staghorns and elkhorns, giant stinging trees, strangler figs, various fungi and two lovely little waterfalls – Crystal Shower and Tristania. Crystal Shower is a “plunge” type waterfall and you can walk in under the fall. Tristania is a beautiful little cascade. There is a lovely background silence, the main sounds being the call of the whipbirds and the tinkling sound of the small waterfalls. Occasionally, through a break in the trees, there is a breathtaking view to the coast.

At the top of the circuit is one of the most attractive picnic areas I have seen, and you will probably not have to wait long there to catch sight of a scrub turkey on the edge of the forest.

At the end of the walk it is a visit to the Skywalk at the Rainforest Centre to take in the view, then back down the mountain to the coastal strip where the plentiful jacarandas are in full bloom,

Next day it is up the coast to Coffs Harbour for the flight back to Melbourne.

The amazing Rory Stewart

Roderick “Rory” Stewart OBE FRSL (Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature) is the Conservative Member for Penrith and the Border in the House of Commons, having been elected in May 2010. Prior to that he had a remarkably varied and adventurous career, culminating in a number of prestigious academic appointments including being appointed in 2004 a Fellow in the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard, and becoming in 2008 the Ryan Family Professor of Human Rights at the same university.

From 2000 to 2002 he walked alone across Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan, India and Nepal, a journey of 6000 miles, during which time he stayed in five hundred different village houses.

The Afghan leg of that journey involved walking alone from Herat to Kabul in early 2002, just after the fall of the Taliban regime. Rather than opt for the conventional southern route via Kandahar, he opted for the direct route, which involved crossing the Hindu Kush in the depths of winter, accompanied only by the large mastiff that he had been given for his own protection early in his journey. In taking this route at this season he was following in the footsteps of Babur, the first Emperor of Mughal India, who had made the journey when his fortunes were at a low ebb early in the sixteenth century. Babur kept a diary of that journey, the Baburnama, a copy of which Stewart carried with him.

Stewart’s account of his amazing Afghan journey, The Places in Between, was published by Picador in 2004, became a bestseller, and won several awards. For anyone interested in Afghanistan, or travel, or adventure, or simply far-away places with strange sounding names, this is a memorable read.

A good overview of the amazing career (so far) of this man who has yet to turn forty can be found at his Wikipedia entry here.

Gallo-Roman remains at Chaponost

In preparation for a holiday in France in January last year I searched online for one nights’s accommodation in Lyon, preferably within walking distance of Place Bellecour, the heart of the city. For some reason a lot of the accommodation was fully booked and what little was available was either not particularly conveniently located or fiercely expensive or both.

I then turned to the trusty Logis de France website (English language version here) to see what might be available in nearby villages.  I came across something that looked acceptable in a village called Chaponost. Google Maps told me that the time from the Logis to Place Bellecour was about 25 minutes, so I booked it.

I subsequently discovered that Chaponost is the site of one of the largest Gallo-Roman remains in France – a massive aqueduct that transported water from the Gier River to Lugdunum, the site of the modern city of Lyon at the junction of the Rhône and the Saone.

This turned out to be an excellent option. The Logis was clean and comfortable, we could park in the establishment’s yard at no cost, and the journey time to Place Bellecour was exactly as Google Maps had predicted. So after spending the day motoring down from Lyons, we checked in, rang the Restaurant Raphaël Béringer (see Restaurant Raphaël Béringer, Lyon), to be told that they were full but if we would come early they would fit us in, had a shower, motored off to the Presqu’île area of central Lyon, drove around the block a few times in the rain until we found a parking space, had a delightful meal, and returned to Chaponost.

The next morning we awoke in sparkling sunshine, a few hundred metres from the aqueducs romains du Gier, and spent a pleasant hour inspecting the ruins before motoring off to spend the rest of the day in Lyon.

   

 

 

  

  

  

  

  

 

Baggage nightmares with V Australia

Yesterday my wife and I returned to Australia from a two-week skiing holiday in Utah (Park City), flying each way with V Australia’s daily service out of Sydney. The flying experience (passenger comfort, cabin cleanliness, meals, adherence to schedule) was of good standard. Unfortunately I cannot say the same about my experience of baggage handling, as the following account will indicate:

-   We were booked to fly from Melbourne to Sydney on VA 873, operated by Virgin Blue, ETD Melbourne 1745 hrs Wednesday 13 January, ETA Sydney 1910, to connect with VA 001, ETD Sydney 2105 hrs Weds 13 January.

-   We landed in Sydney at about 1900, thus leaving two full hours for baggage transfer.

-   Nevertheless, when we landed in Los Angeles my suit case failed to appear on the baggage carousel.  My wife’s suit case and our two ski boot bags did appear, thus demonstrating that there had been time in Sydney to make the baggage transfer.

-   The V Australia representative on the ground at LAX directed me to Delta Baggage Services, where I was told that about half a dozen bags had been left behind in Sydney and would be despatched on the following day’s flight. I should file a missing baggage report on arrival at Salt Lake City Airport.

-   When I filed the missing baggage report with Delta Baggage Services at Salt Lake City Airport at about 2130 local time on 13 January the agent did a baggage trace and confirmed that my bag had been left behind in Sydney: I saw this for myself on the agent’s screen. She said that it would follow on the next flight and be delivered to my hotel.

-   The following day I rang V Australia’s toll-free baggage services number in the United States with the aim of ensuring that V Australia was up with the play and that my bag would indeed be despatched on the next available flight.  I found myself speaking to someone in an India-based call centre. The woman I spoke to told me that the whereabouts of my bag was not known but that everything possible was being done to trace it.

-   I protested that on the evening before I had been told that it had been left behind in Sydney and the agent had shown me the results of the baggage trace on her screen. The agent simply reiterated that the whereabouts of my bag was not known but that everything possible was being done to trace it.

-   I then rang Delta Baggage Services and the agent I spoke to confirmed that my bag had been left behind in Sydney and as it had not been scanned aboard an aircraft it could be assumed to be still on the ground in Sydney. This meant that it had not been despatched on the flight following mine.

-   The following day (Friday 15 local time) I rang both V Australia and Delta Baggage Services again. With V Australia the story was the same – whereabouts of bag not known, everything was being done to trace it. When I started to protest that this was not what I was being told by Delta Baggage Services, the line dropped out; I assume that the agent, whose English was barely adequate, hung up on me. I rang back and spoke to someone else, but the story was the same: whereabouts of bag unknown, airline is trying to trace it.

-   Delta Baggage Services, on the other hand, was able to tell me that the bag was being carried aboard the V Australia flight which would be landing at LAX at about 1530 that day (i.e. the one which left Sydney two days after me), and give me an estimate of how long it would take to forward it to Salt Lake City.

-   The bag finally caught up with me in Park City, Utah, about 72 hours after I filed the delayed baggage report.

After a long career involving extensive international travel I know that bags do miss connections or get delayed for one reason or another. I also know that this is supposed to be a rare occurrence, particularly in these days when security considerations dictate that baggage should travel on the same aircraft as the customer, and that the usual reason for missed connections is delayed incoming flights leaving too little time for the baggage transfer to be executed.

What I find unacceptable about the above experience is as follows:

-   It is unacceptable for baggage to be left behind when there is more than two hours to make the transfer, and within the same airline group.

-   It is unacceptable that, having been left behind, the bag was not despatched on the flight the following day, taking a full 48 hours to be sent on its way.

-   It is unacceptable that V Australia’s baggage services agents are not able to provide the passenger with information which Delta agents can readily ascertain from the international baggage tracing system. Even when my bag was en route to Los Angeles on board a V Australia aircraft, V Australia was telling me that the whereabouts of my bag was unknown.  This is hopeless. My advice to V Australia would be to lose the India-based call centre, fast. The use of outsourced call centres for purposes like this smacks of a culture of “managing” customer problems, rather than attempting to resolve them.

It gets worse:

-   My wife and I departed Salt Lake City on Saturday on a Delta flight to Los Angeles, connecting with VA 002 to Sydney, on timelines which provided for a two hour window for the baggage transfer. The flight landed on schedule.

-   When we arrived in Sydney we again had the dreary experience of standing at the baggage carousel watching a diminishing number of fellow passengers retrieve their baggage, at the end of which we wandered off to find someone with whom to file a missing baggage report. Neither of our ski boot bags had come off the plane. A trace of the bag tag numbers quickly ascertained that the two boot bags were still on the ground in Los Angeles.

-   By the time we had finished lodging a missing baggage report in Sydney we had missed our 0745 connection to Melbourne and found ourselves standing at the back of a long queue at the transfer desk. It turned out that the baggage had come off the flight so slowly (it took more than an hour, although we were the only flight on the ground at the time) that many of our fellow passengers had also missed connecting flights and were being rebooked, the net effect of which for us was that the following two flights were full and we had to wait until 1015 for an onward flight.

In the course of thirty years engaged in intensive international travel for internationally oriented Commonwealth Departments like Trade, Foreign Affairs and Trade and Defence, I can recall only two experiences of a delayed bag. V Australia managed to more than double this in the course of a single return trip across the Pacific. If anyone were to ask me for my assessment of V Australia, I would have to reply, “How important to you is it to arrive with your luggage?”.

To Port Macquarie the interesting way

I recently spent a couple of days with an old friend from university days on her farm outside Macksville in northern New South Wales. The arrangement was that she would drive me to Port Macquarie in time to catch a 5.00 pm flight to Sydney and thence to Melbourne.

The day before this was to happen she asked whether I had ever driven down the road that runs just behind the sand dunes from Crescent Head to Point Plomer, thence through the Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve to the Settlement Point Ferry across the Hastings River just upstream of Port Macquarie. I hadn’t, and it seemed like an opportunity too interesting to miss because every year until I left university I used to spend three weeks in the Christmas-New Year holidays at Port Macquarie. One could stand on the high ground above the Town Beach and gaze across the Breakwater to the North Wall and beyond to the 16 km long North Beach that runs unbroken from the North Wall to Queens Head and Point Plomer in the distance. It had always seemed a place of mystery and imagination – so close and so familiar, and yet no-one I knew had ever been there because in the absence of a boat or a four-wheel drive it might as well have been on the other side of the moon. And as this 1958 colour slide shows, there wasn’t much to cross to the other side for.

My friend rang the Tourist Information Office at Port Macquarie to ascertain whether the road was open and was told that we would get through alright as long as we had “a real four-wheel drive”. That started to sound a bit serious but we decided to give it a go – my friend’s farm truck was indeed “a real four-wheel drive” with a low range setting.

Crescent Head to Point Plomer was easy – sealed road for part of the way, and properly formed gravel for the rest. The road runs through the scrub behind the long narrow Goolawah Lagoon, and after a few kilometres it arrives at the Goolawah Reserve at the Racecourse Headland. Beautiful beach, miles from anywhere, camping permitted on either of two reserves, for which you pay the caretaker the princely sum of about $6 per head per night. Maximum stay – 16 weeks. No facilities – nearest showers Crescent Head – just the right to camp right there on the almost deserted beach.

The place is not exactly crowded – the nearer vehicle is ours.

On the Port Macquarie side of Racecourse Headland, there is another beach offering a good view of the headland,

and Point Plomer comes into view:

There is a standard camping area there, with on-site manager and the usual facilities.

After Point Plomer it starts to get interesting. You enter thicker vegetation and a sign tells you that you are entering the Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve, and that the road is “not suitable for 2WD”. That is a piece of advice that is always to be taken seriously and this particular 10 km section of road is no exception.

It is not steep or slippery, but there are two types of hazards (apart from substantial rocks projecting out of the road) to ensure that this is 4WD territory whatever the weather. First, there are very deep depressions in the road and not much opportunity to skirt around them. They take up the full width of the road and are of comparable length. When they were full of turbid water after rain, you would have no idea how deep they were and I think an unskilled driver could get into trouble.

For us it was perfectly dry and we faced the other problem – deep drifts of very fine white sand. The road ahead looks innocent enough, but when it is dry the fine white sand which makes the beaches in that area so attractive almost turns to a slurry or fluidised bed when you drive on the deeper drifts, and anything other than a low-range 4WD would bog up to the axles.

Along the way there are a few opportunities to pull the truck to the side of the road and walk up a short track to the beach, for a clear view of Port Macquarie, with the familiar bulge of Nobby’s Headland towards the left.

At the end of about 10 km of inching forward at a few km per hour, you suddenly burst out of 4WD land and come to a fork in the road which gives the options of driving to the North Wall or driving to the Settlement Point Ferry (or beyond to Crescent Head the boring way).

They pack them on to the Settlement Point Ferry, which is on the old alignment of the Pacific Highway, the main coast road from Sydney to Brisbane. There used to be a lot of those coastal punts on the Pacific Highway, which made travel time highly uncertain. On one Christmas holiday some friends of my father took me fishing at Blackman’s Point at the junction of the Maria River with the Hastings. On the return journey we waited 3.5 hours in the queue for a punt to take us to the Port Macquarie side of the Hastings.

The punt ride offers some splendid views up the Hastings to the junction of the Maria.

A few minutes after disembarking one is standing at Town Beach looking across to the North Wall (compare with the 1958 photo) and up the North Beach to Point Plomer.