Another wintery festival on a hot, sunny day was upon us. New years Eve.
We had already booked our beds for this night in a hostel in Bellingen.
This is actually the hostel where Lulu and Karsten met four and a half years ago.
We took the smaller roads there but didn't have many stops along the way, so we arrived quite early (I think around 2pm) and checked in.
After a short walk to explore the small village with a very obvious Hippie Atmosphere about it we found our self at a little restaurant which served veggie burger fish burger and chicken burger. There were no beef burgers on the menu - the closest thing was a buffalo burger.
My theory about this is that in Hippie circles (just as with Hindus) the cow is a holy animal. So I chose the buffalo burger from local produce (the menu actually stated the farmers names of potatoes lettuce and and tomatoes.
The burger was fantastic but tastewise even overshadowed by the handmade chips. The may have been the best chips I ever ate.
We asked them for their secret and apparently they fry them twice or something. Will have to give that a try back home.
Anyway, all this Hippieness didn't come cheap, just like the other boutique shops in this village. All in all it was a very posh and fancy hippie town.
I appreciate the way they promote organic and local produce and all this but the fanciness of the hippies around was a bit annoying.
Otherwise the town was nice, cozy and laid back.
After this big feast we all had a rest in our rooms and gathered some strength for the long night ahead.
Around 6ish I woke up again it was time to get the party started.
We had bought plenty of beer and started off with the first one (we had a good selection of IPAs and pale ale craft beers waiting for us this night).
The hostel had filled up a bit now. Some were the fancy hippie type, some were rough locals. It was hard to find any sympatic people in the place in the beginning.
We stayed on our own for the beginning and had our pasta on the balcony overlooking a wide flood plane of the Bellingen River.
On dusk thousands of large bats came flying into town out of the surrounding forests.
I am not surprised these animals have the stories around them that they have. It was quite spooky, all of them flying into the same direction as if they were also on their way to a party - maybe "The Dance of the Vampires".
A couple minutes before midnight we turned on the little TV and watched the countdown to the new year around Sydney's Harbour Bridge with anticipation.
This time I was one of the first people in the world to be in the new year. We were 10 hours ahead of Germany and 11 hours ahead of Ireland.
Everyone cheered to each other and the spirit lifted.
After a round of hugs and good wishes, one of the guys, Alex, started playing the guitar and we were all singing "Waltzin' Matilda"...
The good mood went on for a couple of hours until the room cleared up and silence took over for the first time of they year.
We stayed one more night at Casino but wanted to see some other places. We decided to drive west to Tenterfield which is birthplace of Australia. Here, in 1889 (24.10.1889) Sir Henry Parkes held the Federation Speech that led to the independence of the six British le colonies that now form Australia (Canberra being the 7th).
We had a nice break with a coffee in that very building where the speech was held. The School of Arts.
In this nice little town we also did a walking tour with a leaflet provided by the tourist office and found a small, privately run museum with all sorts of old pots, farm equipment and weapons.
I even got a 1$ coke from a really old looking fridge.
After some time searching for a place that would sell us food (the first place's kitchen burned down, the second was too fancy, the third didn't sell food at this time) we found a place that had burgers.
Back at the camp ground we enjoyed our last night in the "wild", as tomorrow we would be back in a hostel for 3 nights.
There is not much going on in Casino NSW but it has a nice historic feel about it. Many buildings are still from settlers times from either the late 19th century or the early 20th century.
It looked a bit like a city from a Western (just a little bit newer and with cars).
At the tourist information we got a little walking tour flyer which led us through the town to different buildings and gave us some information about them.
By now the rain had seized, so this was the ideal thing to do.
It was a good 3 km walk until we got to the old Cecil Hotel. The local watering hole served ideally as a resting place to cool down with a local beer. The Waitress said, the brewery was only 400 km away... I guess this counts as local in Australia.
The afternoon, because it got so hot, we spent back at the camp ground. It was a very large, very organized camp ground and a bit too organized for my feeling.
I sat in the library shed for a couple of hours, as they had power and a ceiling fan there, to follow up on some entries of my blog.
In the evening it was BBQ time again.
What better place to do loads of BBQ, than Casino - "The beef capitol of Australia"?
This evening we also enjoyed a glass of the 12yo RedBreast that joined me on the flight from Dublin to Australia and of course we played more cards.
When we woke up it was still raining and it didn't look like it was getting any better any time soon. This is not how I imagined the summer in Australia. It as hot alright, but also very wet.
We weren't sure what to do for the day, so we drove up to, you may have guessed right, Tourist information to get some tips what to do on a rainy day in Kyogle.
The lady there was again very chatty but also very helpful and gave us a whole bag of information papers (incl. some pencils for the kids).
On the way there (to the tourist information) Karsten realized that his new 200 $ sunglasses are no longer in the car. He probably left them lying at the counter of the Pizza place yesterday. Of course this place didn't open until the afternoon.
So we had some time to do one of the drives that we were told about at the Tourist information and come back to the Pizza place when it is open to ask if they had found the sun glasses.
So we went on the drive to the around the western country side of Kyogle to the Toonumbar Dam and reservoir. After some time the road became a gravel track and we were riding along just fine in our Hyundai Accent.
The road was very quite and we may only have seen 1 or 2 cars in an hour. Instead of a lot of cars we saw a lot of kangaroos though.
There were at least 5 or 6 that jumped from the street into the bushes and fields when we were approaching with our car. Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot (with my camera) of them, but when we stopped at a lookout we spotted two "Roos" sitting on the grass. I went a bit closer to get a better shot and after some consideration whether to run or stay, and me getting closer, the Kangaroos jumped away but I did get a good shot of them.
Along the road back to Kyogle we passed through a farm where a very protective dog ran along side our car in order to protect his cows.
Back in Kyogle we checked in with the Pizza people but they had not found the sun glasses.
From here grumpy Karsten drove us to the next larger town south of Kyogle called Casino. Here we wanted to find a camp ground for the night.
The tourist information was close but they had (like all the other) some information about accommodation hanging in their windows. We rang one of the camp grounds and they had plenty of space available.
In the Hinterland it does not seem to be overly busy at this time of the year.
Karsten even found his sun glasses in the car again... so the beers were on him this night.
It was BBQ time again and we got some steaks, tomatoes and onions at Aldi (yes they have that here as well) and enjoyed a nice evening at the Camp Ground.
As the Skat game was to much brain work we decided to further improve our Chinese Card Game skills that evening.
