The dog on the tuckerbox at Gundagai. This commemorates the poems, or songs, about the bullock-drivers, bullockies, and the pioneers of inland Australia. It was the bullock drivers that transported goods along mud tracks in all weathers to the early settlers. The bronze dog is the work of Frank Rusconi, a local monumental mason.
A close-up of the Big Merino in Goulburn. Apparently he is known as Rambo by the locals.
The Big Merino in Goulburn. The three-storey 50 foot tall concrete ram houses a gift shop, wool display and a lookout.
It’s not all mainline steam at Thirlmere. They have a big selection of ganger’s trolleys as well, like this Fairmont example. Fairmont Railway Motors built track equipment like this from 1915. In 1979 Harsco Track Technologies took over Fairmont.
Some random tourist block the view of the trains at the Thirlmere Railway Museum.
Behind us is 2029, a NSW Railways 2-6-4T Z-20 Class. In the background is 38 Class Pacific (4-6-2), 3820, an express passenger locomotive.
The long arm of the law finally caught up with me in Thirlmere. Here I am imprisoned in the NSW Government Railways BKD Prison Van. Four of these vans were built in 1915 and remained in service until 1975, transporting prisoners around the state.
A cabbage tree palm along the Illawarra Fly Tree Top Walk.
A tree fern seen from above along the Illawarra Fly.
A clump of bird’s nest ferns, Asplenium australasicum, amongst the tree of the Illawarra Fly. The bird’s nest fern is epiphytic, an air-plant, it grows on trees or rocks but with no roots to the ground. They get their nutrients from air, rain water and decaying matter around them
The view from the Illawarra Fly Tree Top Walk. The steel tree top walk combined with the Illawarra Escarpment combine to give an amazing vantage point. From the Tree Top Walk we are looking across Lake Illawarra from over Albion Park on the near side across to Port Kembla, with the Tasman Sea on the horizon.
The Minnamurra Falls in the Budderoo National Park.
Kiama is the home of two blowholes, this is the little one. When there isn’t much swell the little blowhole is the more spectacular of the two. And so we found it on our visit in 2009, with the big blowhole managing barely a splutter.