Blogs from Tumut, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

With a cold front blowing in from Antarctica having scuppered my plans for one final week-long trek in the mountains of Victoria, I had been forced to acknowledge that autumn had well and truly arrived in this part of Australia and it was time to start heading north. "No worries", I thought to myself, "there are plenty of adventures to keep me going over the border in New South Wales". That was until I finally got around to checking the NSW National Parks website, at which point the full extent of the state's recent spate of natural disasters became all too apparent. Blue Mountains? Most trails still closed from the bushfires of the summer BEFORE last. Yuraygir NP? Sections of the coastal trail and numerous campgrounds closed from a combination of fire and flood damage. Myall ... read more

No sooner have we arrived back in town, it’s a new year, it is still summer, we still have plenty of things to do and places to go. This weekend we are heading out to a friend’s property in the Brindabella’s as there is a lengthy training session on how to use a chain saw. As we own one and sometimes take it on trips, we both felt that it was a good idea to know how to use it safely, so our training officer had organised a professional company to come in and give all those who were interested some proffessional chain saw training nd the course was called Cahinsaw maintenance and cross cutting techniques. I have arranged to head off early to get Gypsy ready and then Andy can join me as soon as ... read more

Well, I suppose I really should have updated our last family travel 'adventure". We in fact never made it overseas, unless you count Sydney harbour. We didn't even make it to the airport. So what was our destination you ask? Goulburn Base Hospital emergency department. It's about half way from where we live to the airport. There we lodged Nana (aka Joan) into their care and waited to see if she was going to make a one way trip on us. The verdict, Pancreatitis, a nasty issue that creates all sorts of problems for the body and can apparently finish you off if your unlucky. Nana was very lucky. So how did our holiday go you ask. well, we did some travelling. Mainly between sydney and goulburn, We managed to stay in a hotel, take a ... read more