Advertisement
Published: August 17th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Joshua at Jericho
This sculpture is made from barbed wire and stands outside the Visitor Information Centre in Jericho. I woke with a migraine today so Barry left me to sleep for a bit longer. After breakfast, we went into Jericho town centre (so named as it was built next to the already existing Jordan River!) and drove around. It had a few murals, too, including some by the same artist as the Alpha ones. Again, I especially liked the ones on the toilet block, including a scene of mustering of the cattle on one side and a very colourful and pretty rural scene featuring a huge eucalyptus tree on a property, which is in the background and some cattle keeping out of the sun under another one near a creek. It even has some of the small termite mounds we keep seeing.
The Jericho Tourist Information Centre was closed but we could see one of its features through the windows. They had produced, in glazed clay, replicas of many of the buildings in the town as they were in 2002. They looked very nice, from what we could see, simple and rustic style pottery.
Right next to the Centre was a colourful garden bed with Joshua, made of barbed wire, blowing his horn to bring down the
The Crystal Trumpeters, Jericho
The whole sculpture represents the Jews getting out of Egypt and being led to the Promised Land. It is very interpretive and, unfortunately, very washed away by floods, at least the detail is. walls as in the bible story of Jericho. They kept up the theme with another town feature, the “Crystal Trumpeters”, which was made up of a circle of upright sandstone rocks with a strong golden colour, surrounding a central raised dais that had golden clay sculptures around it and an upright horn standing proudly at the back. A sign said that it told the story of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt after the Passover (some Egyptians carved into a few of the rocks but fading); their flight through the parted Red Sea (you could just make out some red paint on one of the rocks); past a rock with a hole in it and a small depression like a bowl carved below it and meant to represent the water that appeared when Moses struck the rock (only it was dry – maybe due to the drought); past 10 large rocks for the 10 Commandments that didn’t have anything on them that I could see; to a taller rock with a few difficult to see birds on it representing the Feast of the Quails; and Moses sighting of the Promised Land (shown by some fruit carved on another tall
One Fancy Toilet Block, Jericho
This lovely mural was outside the toilet block in the main street. It was one of my favourites. rock that you could just see). It was an interesting idea but seems to have been washed away in the 2010 and 2011 floods and hasn’t been restored, which is sad.
The town also had the smallest drive-in cinema in Australia, with only listening poles (and space) for 36 cars plus a “pash pit” at the back either side of the projection room, which had deck chairs wide enough for two people to cuddle up in! It was recently refurbished as a joint local council and State Government project and looks great. The cinema shows a double feature once a month, with the next being on the 16
th of August and screening “Maleficent” and “Tinkerbell and the Pirate Fairy” (not exactly “pashing” kind of movies I would have thought!) plus a Barbecue at 6pm. Go Jericho! You find the most unexpected things in these little outback towns!
One thing that was the similar to Sapphire was the General Store (plus gift shop/cafe/take-away/ TV lounge) which also had a corral as the cafe area and a second for the TV lounge right next to it. We bought one of the last two 1 litre bottles of milk and a
Find the Errors Mural.
This wonderful mural used to be inside the Jordan Valley Hotel but ended up outside during re-modelling. Unfortunately, it is now starting to deteriorate in the weather. It was fun trying to find the mistakes in the picture. couple of postcards to send to my Mum in England. Then we went next door to the Jordan Valley Hotel for a couple of Lemon, Lime and Bitters. There was a mural of a very red sunset scene over the door of the bar and outside, under the veranda, was a lovely painting of a pioneer man and woman attempting to split a log next to a river and some tents and a hay barn on the opposite bank along with some other cattle, horses and people. Unfortunately, it was badly deteriorated at the bottom of the picture. The pub owner told us that it had been painted about 30 years ago and had originally been inside but when the pub had been remodelled by the previous owner, it ended up outside, to which conditions it wasn’t suited .
She also told us that there were a lot of errors in the painting and we had a bit of fun trying to discover them. I’d already noticed that the swans were white ones, and she told us that the man had six fingers. There were also some very odd looking animals that looked a bit like Brahmin cattle but
Jericho Drive-In Theatre
This is the smallest Drive-in Theatre in Australia, with room for 36 cars. Note the "Pash Pit" at the back with the double deckchairs were the size of sheep. The couple splitting the log were going about it completely wrong, too. She said there was also a man in the shadows with no legs but we couldn’t find him and she wouldn’t say where he was.
The Hotel was up for sale as the owners really live in Taree, NSW, and used to have a manager running the bar. He left and they had to come down and sort out some problems and get the place running properly again but they want to go back home, where they have family. It is so hard to make a living in these little towns, and doubly hard to sell a business where you can’t expect to make a lot of money (or even a profit?).
The only other person in the bar was a young man who lived in town and was a member of the volunteer Rural Fire Brigade (it said so on his green shirt). It seems he had come in for a scheduled fire practice but the wind had risen and it had been cancelled so he came for a few beers instead. He and the bar owner had been talking
Opening Hours - Jericho Style
This little store only displays its opening hours. I asked when it closes and was told, "Usually around 3.30 or 4pm weekdays and 1 or 2 pm Saturdays. It depends on how busy I am." Only in the country! about dogs when we arrived and we were drawn into the conversation. It turns out that he has a huge Great Dane that stands as high as the bar (that makes him bigger than the 3 miniature horses we’d seen in someone’s property earlier) and has a very deep “woof”. He is very friendly but hates to have his photo taken. Evidently, he is quite happy for people to approach him when he is in the back of the ute, but if people try and take his photo, he starts growling! One camera shy dog. Even the animals have character out here.
We finished our drinks and went back to the ute for lunch, then Barry worked on the laptop doing the finances while I fossicked through some more of the sapphire wash we were still carrying from the bag we bought in NSW. I did almost half of it and found nothing. Ah well. It was all I felt up to doing with my headache still going strong.
A magpie came down and drank from the muddy water I had in a small container so I refilled it with fresh water and left it on one side for him. He immediately came back for another drink and didn’t seem to be afraid of being quite close to me. By the time he’d finished the sun was getting too low for seeing the sapphires in the wash so I packed up and made dinner.
Barry went out while I was cooking and said the magpie was back again for more water. He is obviously fussy and prefers it clean not from the puddles near the leaking water taps around the camping ground!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.115s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 53; dbt: 0.0671s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb