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Published: February 24th 2024
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We took another walk around town this morning and found ourselves completing part of Casino’s Federation Heritage Scenic Walk. We probably walked some of it yesterday too but failed to notice the information boards! This morning, we could have done without finding the fruit bat colony down near the river, ha, ha. Actually, it wasn’t too bad seeing as there has been rain recently; they weren’t too smelly!
We learnt that Casino was established on the Richmond River in the 1830s by Henry Clay and George Stapleton when they laid claim to 30,000 acres in the Richmond Valley. The site was on/near the original crossing point on the Richmond River and had been colloquially known as ‘The Crossing Place’. Henry and George however decided to name their property ‘Cassino’ after the Italian town of Monte Cassino. As is often the way of things when the town was proclaimed in the government gazette in 1855 an ‘S’ was dropped from the name so that Cassino became known as Casino!
For lunch today we wandered along to Lemo’s a café just a block from the motel. I was planning on a lighter sandwich today, maybe egg and lettuce or a salad BUT they had BLTs on Turkish bread on the menu. Bernie was having one of those and I didn’t want to have FOMO so it was two BLTs to go! We took our sandwiches back to the motel and ate by the pool.
Mid-afternoon we drove around to Keith and Shirley’s. Rodney and Elizabeth are staying there despite the potential COVID risk. When you have travelled nearly 1,700 kilometres to visit someone what do you do?! I took the album of family memories around with us and Keith and Rodney enjoyed looking through it.
The item in the stash of stuff that is most intriguing is a love poem to our Nana that was not penned by our grandfather, Edmund!!? It’s not dated so there is no way of knowing if the mysterious Jack was trying to woo her while grandpa was a POW in Germany during WWI or if it pre-dates any romantic involvement between nana and grandpa? Regardless, Nana kept this poem her whole life for the generations afterwards to wonder about when they found it!!! Tania is quite the family history detective, and she is going to try to work out who Jack might have been. Shame he didn’t have a less common moniker!
Mahlon arrived back from Ballina Airport in Keith and Shirley’s car. They had driven Helen and Maddie to the airport to catch their flight back to Melbourne. We offered to drive Mahlon back home since I wanted to show the family pictures and documents to Judy too while I had them all with me. Judy also enjoyed the walk down memory lane getting quite emotional reading the letters of sympathy that were sent when Grandpa passed away in 1950. Judy was six when grandpa passed away so has some memories of him.
Back to the club for dinner. My plan to have Sunday roast was thwarted because the bistro is not open on Sunday evenings!! Rather than wander around town looking for any other option (unlikely, based on Friday night’s experience) we decided to eat in the club’s café. Steak sandwiches for two. Our dietary intake is definitely in need of some vegetables!
Steps: 10,344 (6.98kms)
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