Gap Creek Falls

I thought I would go to Gap Creek Falls today, which is about 1.5 hours drive from where I live, in the Watagan Mountains. So you can imagine my disappointment when about 5 km from the falls at most I came across this.

I couldn’t believe it. So, I had to do other things which I’ll post about over the next day or so.

So what had I intended to visit and walk to? The picture below is Gap Creek Falls. My favourite place in the region and one of my favourite places in New South Wales.

ABOVE: Gap Creek Falls Barely Flowing BELOW: Palms at Gap Creek

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Stroud Parade

ABOVE: View from Silo Hill

 

Today was the first day of my annual leave allottment (technically it starts Monday) and so I decided to get out and do something. The Stroud International Brick and Rolling Pin Throwing Competition seeemed to be the thing to do today. So I decided I would offer my mother and her husband a seat in the car and head off to Stroud. Turned out only my mother would be coming. Disappointingly the day was wet and miserable – a typical Australian winter’s day I guess. Still, we thought we would go and have a look anyway.

 

ABOVE: Stroud House

 

We arrived at Stroud just as the main street was being closed for the parade. So we got our park and headed into the centre of town to gain a reasonable vantage point, with the option of some shelter should the weather turn especially bad. We got our place easy enough. Stroud was fairly packed for the event, but not as much as I thought it may have been – the weather probably kept many away. Still, a pretty good turn out.

So off they went, a whole menagerie of marchers in the big parade. It was an odd bunch, some seemingly out of tune with the country in which they marched and the context of the town. Everyone was having a ball, particularly the kids who seemed to be the targets of the often thrown lollies and sweets that were being hurled from the floats and marching rag tag line of marchers. There were North American Indians, whip crackers, witches and wizards, some rather fat ballerina types (pictured) and many other odd characters. There were also the police (representing 150 years of police work), firemen, SES and other services – even church floats, a debutante ball float, school groups – as it went on and on for some time. There were musical groups, including a couple of groups of Scottish bands and a ukulele group.

 

ABOVE: The Ballerinas BELOW: Marching Police

ABOVE: Debutante Float

 

Having attended the march we decided to not stay as the weather was rolling in again. We took a quick trip up to Silo Hill to enjoy the view and headed back to Gloucester.

City Hall – Newcastle

Just a quick shot of Newcastle’s City Hall. Another grand old building in Newcastle.

When I was in Newcastle recently, this was the place you had to go to visit the men’s, as the one in Civic Park was closed. Just a small community notice 🙂