faFFing around - The Tour de SEQ - photo & fun heavy

[FenceFurniture]

So we spent exactly 25 hours at Ian's place (11.30 Sunday until 12:30 Monday). It felt like substantially longer!

Ian, thank you so much for wonderful hospitality, your generosity of tools, time and talk. We both had an absolute blast there, just as we did in Millmerran! Two different but equally excellent experiences. God I love this forum, and the camaraderie!

Now you may read some disparaging remarks about the amount of saws in a certain 20' container in Millmerran. Frankly, I doubt there are more than 500 in the first container. OTOH, I also doubt there are more than 50 marking gauges, 100 chisels, and 40 or so planes contained within Ian's room.

Oh, and perhaps 20 mallets.

Maybe 24 or so home made saws (as users).

[aldav]

Hopefully you guys will get back alive, even if you are pickled!
You don't see many clamp displays like that one. Most of us have enough trouble buying them.

[Pac man]

Is there life on Mars?

[IanW]

As usual, FF exaggerates slightly, but whatever, it was a great visit. There can't be many better things to do than sit on the veranda on a beautiful, balmy afternoon, quaffing excellent booze & shooting the breeze with a couple of fellow wood & tool tragics! But there is one - sitting around the dinner table with some tolerable food & some even better beverage and shooting more breeze. Somewhere around the bottom of the second (or was it the third?) bottle, we had the world sorted out really well, we reckoned. There would've been a Nobel peace-prize coming up for sure, but dammit, no-one could quite remember this morning, what those perfect solutions we'd devised for the world's problems were.

I suppose we'll jut have to do it all again. It's tough work, but we are noble chaps all, & we'll manfully bear the burden.....

[IanW]

Is there life on Mars?

You should have posed that question at 10 o'clock yesterday evening. We would have had a very well thought-out & exquisitely-presented answer (or 3)....

[fletty]

OK, OK, I’ve been tardy in posting. I could have blamed reception (especially on Mars ), I could have blamed technical incompetence, I could have blamed alcohol intolerance but NO...... I was just having too much fun to stop and compose. Now, as I took the time today to draft my posts, I realised that FF had already said much of what I wanted to say? However, before I get all bogged down in selecting and downloading pics, I want to say some thankyous. Mal and Greg (Rolland’s Plains), Madeleine, Ben (Boambee), Paul and Leanne (Millmerran) and Ian (Pullenvale) have all housed, fed and looked after us wonderfully. It seems that being involved in woodwork and/or being related to F1 makes you an excellent host and vibrant company.
So, we are now in a motel outside of Kyogle where the manager appears to have had a charisma bypass (he’s obviously not a woodworker) and his disturbing commentary on his own WIFI indicates that posting and uploading could be a tedious affair.
I will post my TOD contributions attached to FFs relevant posts but I will post some ‘pretty pics’ here. Many of them will look similar to FFs because he was, after all, standing beside me.

I can only add to FFs sense of wonder at Boutique Timber. The wildlife is as wonderful as the timber!

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Tooloom National Park is worth the diversion

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As is the lovely town of Warwick

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AND, doing an excellent impersonation of of the despatch bay of an 1890’s saw factory, is (one of) Bushmiller’s workshops...

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.... and his unique 3 sided shed...

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..... which adds to the charm of his beautifully and lovingly restored Queenslander.

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Now, my memory of our stay was that I was strapped to a chair and had Rebellion Bay rum and Bundaberg rum and Coke and/or ginger beer and very fine red wine and sticky wine poured down my throat on 2 separate occassions punctuated by a market and a visit to Mt Basalt? Other people there don’t seem to remember it that way at all and, if it had been so, how could it happen twice? The next day was a tentative and sedate drive towards Brisbane with some fantastic agricultural scenery?

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We arrived at IanW’s beautiful house and even more beautiful shed in the Western reaches of Brisbane.

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Ian, like Paul and Leanne before him, was a fabulous host. The same thing happened though and the strapping to the chair, the plastic funnel and the forced feeding of very fine wine continued .... although this time the ‘torture’ lasted only 1 session. This reminds me however of the Scottish distiller who fell into a vat of whisky but got out to go to the toilet 3 times before he drowned. However, I digress, the tour of the shed, the enjoyment and admiration of Ian’s toolmaking skills and this gentleman’s willing sharing of his time, knowledge and cullinary skills was little short of amazing.

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So, that brings us up to lunchtime today ...... FF, could you pass the red wine please.......?

[FenceFurniture]

Always been a favourite of mine.....get off the beaten track as soon as practically possible. That's where the real world is, and photo opportunities aplenty.

From Pullenvale (west Brissie) we went down through Beaudesert to Rathdowney and then kicked off to the left (SE). As soon as the main routes are eschewed the photo opps present themselves. We had previously noted, on the rather ordinary (visually) road to Beaudesert, the the clouds were made for landscape photography.



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Rathdowney:
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The tree to the left of the shed is one that Xanthorrheas should be able to nail for us, with some more detail. Clearly a Myrtaceae, and I believe a Eucy, it has foot long leaves but skinny little trunks, and big hooter flowers. That's the scientific analysis - David can provide the lay interpretation

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[FenceFurniture]

A few hundred metres later, another photo opp.

We are all woodies.

We all love wood.

We all love trees.

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That railway bridge is the N-S line for the XPT.

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On the 8th of Feb 1991, the floodwaters were pretty high.

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[FenceFurniture]

Set by f as 15.20, and adhered to.

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I had to in-camera edit out some pics so I could keep shooting (card space), and what would have been a suitable pic of a tractor bearing down on me went begging. So of my 3 entries there are two from the same sequence.

[fletty]

After yet another beautiful lunch with Ian today, we headed towards Kyogle which will be our start point for visiting Uki Mill, Mullumbimby Slab works and HNT tomorrow. FF has covered off the logistics, so I’ll just add some more pics in (rough) chronological order

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As we clambered all over the rail bridge we noticed something intriguing. A tiny, well maintained but sad grave of a 2 week old baby who died in 1923 and a ‘lest we forget’ memorial both on an access track to the rail line. I need to find out more.....

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Our journey continued until stunning late afternoon light and a rainbow stopped us in our tracks....

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We knew that the corrugated iron hall at The Risk would look stunning in this light but there were so many other opportunities on the way.....

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.... that we feared we would miss it. However we got there just in time to catch the last light...

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We felt pretty pleased with ourselves and headed for Kyogle but the setting Sun still had a few more surprises for us...

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I’ll post my TOD contributions later. FF is refusing to pass the bottle......

[FenceFurniture]

f1 has a pano of this scene which explains the name a bit better. My little POS P&S is a bit narrower.

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Info on the Border Loop or Cougal Loop here. In short, to be able to get up the hill more easily, the railway line goes in a 540° loop (1½ times around). After we left, we could see it represented on the SatNav - very weird.

Watch this YT vid for at least a minute (and note that this train is 1450 metres long):

[fletty]

Set by f as 15.20, and adhered to.

IMG_5511.jpg .... IMG_5512.jpg

IMG_5513.jpg

I had to in-camera edit out some pics so I could keep shooting (card space), and what would have been a suitable pic of a tractor bearing down on me went begging. So of my 3 entries there are two from the same sequence.

AND F1’s TOD contenders...

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[FenceFurniture]

You should have posed that question at 10 o'clock yesterday evening. We would have had a very well thought-out & exquisitely-presented answer (or 3)....

Yep, 3 answers minimum, all different, one for each bottle, in chronological order.

[fletty]

So TOD was set by FF as 9:11. However, Mother's Day calls (FF) and still eating breakfast at some place in the Lockyer Valley (f). TOD was discreetly reset to 9:41. That found us on the motorway in towards Brisbane, but still well west of Ipswich. What I like about TOD is that it FORCES me to look for pics. Now they may not be great, are even reasonably good pics that I would take by choice, but there have been a couple come out of it that are worthwhile and would not have been otherwise taken without TOD.

FF's 3 entries are as follows:

Attachment 435265


Fairy Martin's nest
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A really really small Fairy Martin's nest - in fact the whole family. These were just below Mum & Dad's place, so I attribute them to one each for the kids.
Attachment 435267

AND fletty’s contenders...

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[fletty]

faFF = pay attention earlier
TOD = Time of Day

Back in the days, fletty and his dear old Dad Don were both keen photographers, and they went on many road trips together. Don would say on any and every given day "12:14" or "10:29" etc, which meant that at 12:14 they would stop the car (or whatever device they were travelling in) and take a photograph of wherever they were.

So a couple of weeks ago, when Al told me about this I thought it might be fun to reinstate this excellent tradition in a current form. Discussed it with the chap and yes, here we are.

This morning I said "12:14" which found us in Karuah in search of Oysters and Prawns for early evening consumption. Now the pics have to be virtually time stamped 12:14 so no fudging pics at 12:41 of the STU-BLOODY-PENDOUS King Prawns and Oysters that followed. (previously the best prawns I have ever had were 20 years ago at Narooma, but these never been frozen Yamba prawns have seriously damaged that reputation.

At 12:14 we hadn't quite made it to the Oyster selling precinct, which was visually no more, or less, interesting than the main drag, aka The Olde Pacific Highway.

So, long story even slightly longer, here is my offering for the very first faFF de TOD Photo reviving a ~45+ year old tradition. Pics have to be taken in a very short window (perhaps 5 mins)

Attachment 435116

Attachment 435117

Attachment 435118

Contestants are allowed 3 images each.

Actually I just made that up on the run, as I happen to have 3 images of the only semi-interesting building in sight at 12:14 today. However, 3 is a good number and we may stay with that, pending flett-meister's approval.

AND, fletty’s contenders...

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