Day 2 at Barrington

Sleeping in a strange place is a little hard but we were pretty tired and even with waking up a couple of times we had a long sleep. The morning calls were of kookaburras cackling instead of the lorikeets that we have these days at home. We have a routine on holidays were it is leisurely waking up and having a cup of tea before shower and another cup of tea. Then I checked the email and Facebook while having a bowl of porridge. Trying to use the microwave should be easy but the instruction manual has a few pages of fine print. So the first bowl of porridge overflowed and I had to clean up the inside getting my finger caught in hot porridge.

We decided to go towards Gloucester and maybe on to Taree. Getting out of the property we turned right instead of left. Paul was certain that was the way to go and get to the main road to get back to Barrington and from there to Gloucester. The road goes up and down hills with some places being broken tar and so pretty bumpy. The clouds were low but at least it was not raining. 

Today’s strange road signs – dog trap creek and actually the dog coats sign again - it is for sale dog coats….. now is this coats for dog or coats made out of dog hair. Another sign said No Bull... did it mean they only had shit? One more - Looking for free mulch - now were they looking for it or were people passing by were looking for it and could get it there? I have seen somewhere on the net that cat and dog hair can be used to make coats. By the time we reached Gloucester the sun was peeping out and the weather was cool and pleasant. We stopped at a parking place right next to the tourist information. We have found that it is the best thing to do when you enter a new area or town as you can get a fair amount of information and have a pleasant chat with the people working there.

Got some local maps and leaflets about waterfalls and local birds. Yesterday I had seen some beautiful birds. A quick glimpse had been of a red head and a green body with white speckles. Having looked this description up on the net I found it was the Eastern Rosella. So getting the bird leaflet was good I thought but I was wrong as there are only names and no pictures. For someone who is new like me it is not very helpful. I had to search for local birds images then click to see if I could find a name. NO that would be too simple! Some people put up photos without any names and so I end up copying the image and doing an image search. A nice little lesson on researching the Internet.

Eastern Rosella

This town was 200 years old in 2003 and the celebration of that double centenary included putting up of mosaics on the oldest building which used to be originally barber’s shop and then a newsagents. It still is a newsagent’s store. Then we walked up and down the high street and found that small squares of mosaics embedded in the pavement at regular intervals. While you can see the pictures of the big ones I did not want to put up about 30 small ones too. 

List of Mosiacs

Had a quick look at house prices – something I like doing. There seem to be much fairer price of properties around here.

Local Grocery Store

Bucketts Mountain and its replica

Onward to Taree from here. We had to make our way from Gloucester along Bucketts Way to Nabiac. There are 2 ways of going to Taree from there by this time we were in a convoy of a big milk tanker in front with 3 cars and then us and a lorry behind us. We thought of taking the smaller road which is shorter by 4kms. But as we turned into it and saw the surface was not too good we decided to turn around and get back behind the truck to go for the pacific Highway. The first exist on the highway was called Failford Road and said it lead to The Lake Ways – another tourist trail. We got to Taree about 11 30 am. This seemed a much bigger town. Gloucester had a population of 2500 but Taree is about 18000. The town has a couple shopping malls across from each other- Manning Mall and Taree Central. Both are not very big and with usual shops and supermarkets. There are places to eat as usual. After checking out the food court we decided to have a look around before deciding if this is where we wanted lunch. Then driving around to see if we could find a chip shop (there should be one as this is riverside) we got lost around the small streets. 

Uniting Church

Beautiful School

We got to Chatham which is a suburb and found a pie shop which certainly did not chips. We ended up driving around and coming back to the riverside. We could see the bridge across the Manning River – Martin Bridge. There was a restaurant just there and it looked good. There was a small play area for kids in front with many benches for people to sit and relax by the waterside and have lunch. I would love to be working in this small town just for the afternoon lunch time by the river. We sat outside in the restaurants and watched channel 7 doing a on the spot interview with one assumes a local businessman? There were the usual seagulls and a few pelicans lazily flying and paddling about. A pleasant afternoon lazy lunch. The smoothies were unusual – one was mixed berries, banana, vanilla, yogurt and fig syrup and the other was raspberry delight which had gingerbread syrup, raspberries and yogurt. A good experience which could have been better had this been a nice cold drink for by now the sun was beating down and it was 31C.

Manning River

Martin Bridge over Manning River

Across the Manning River

Post Lunch Sugar hit

Lone Pelican

Large Clam which failed as tourist attraction and now a car dealership

We started back and decided to return the other way back to Gloucester – Bucketts Way. We thought it could not be worse than other small roads that we had travelled. This was scenic way through the hills. And we came across the longest ever road works on which on one was working. I mean the road had been tarred but no lines were drawn yet and warning of loose gravel every few meters. It was about 10kms or so but no problem as there was just us and other couple of odd cars poodling along. Now when we got to Gloucester and thought right just a few more kilometres and we are home and thinking of that cup of tea we forgot that the nearest way from Gloucester to Barrington was not along the Bucketts Way (after all yesterday was not that far back in memory). So off we went further away from Barrington on the main road. We fairly whizzed pass the Gloucester Tops Road and did a quick stop and u-turn to get back on to the road to get to the right road. Now this looked familiar as we drove up it. Further along we got to a split in the road and saw that Barrington was one way and Gloucester was also along that way. Seeing that we turned down and as we went further it all looked unfamiliar. Opps now we were on the road that was getting narrower and going towards where? There was a creek to cross and indeed the next one was a ford with swift flowing water coming half way up the wheels. Eventually we got to the main road – ah yes Bucketts Way again and much nearer to Gloucester than we wanted to be. So back along the way to the turning of Gloucester Tops Road. We had done a big loop and not found Barrington and I had visions of us going round and round in circles being so near and yet so far from Barrington. This time we drove very slowly after the first split in the road and found the sharp turn left we had missed the first time as the sign was hidden among the leaves for the bushes. Suddenly now we found the familiar bits of the road and reached an hour later that expected.

Got back and sat down with a cup of tea in the veranda and the drizzle started. Then it continued to rain heavily all through the night. The gusts of winds making the rain hammer down on the roof till we could not hear the TV on full volume. It was pretty noisy trying to sleep.