Family Holidays

Family Holidays have never been my favourite time. There's my sister ribbing everyone about how much money we are spending and then in the next breath asking if we can go to the lolly shop again, my brother smells like a homeless person because he just doesn't shower while we are at the hotel, we all have to sleep in the same room so my Mum's snoring makes everyone miserable rather than just my Dad and his neck hurts because of the driving so he's on an even shorter diving board than usual over the deep end. There are usually lots of fights, lots of my sister ignoring us, some poorly researched touristy things to do and then we find a gem or two, usually after I run out of film. The last family holiday I went on over Easter wasn't too bad. We had all the requisite fights, ignoring and general pouty-ness but we also had a few hours that made all of that worthwhile. We went to western New South Wales because, despite living in New South Wales, we had never been further west than the Blue Mountains. So we went to Dubbo, Tullamore, Parkes and Wombian(and a few more for short stops) in search of adventure, wine, great views and sciency stuff.

We set off on Holy Thursday afternoon(no, I'm not religious but it serves as a date marker just as well) and drove west. The fog made the view eerie and kind of spooky. It was perfect weather for us. We bunked down in Mt Victoria in an adorable cabin that took us an hour to find. Our car's GPS is perfect for adventures because it is terrible. We went round the mulberry bush so many times on account of it being strange-minded and just a bit...ok, completely stupid.

The cabin was pretty awesome. It had a bathroom, tiny kitchen and a bunk bed and double bed. The thin partition between the bunk bed and double bed may as well have been non-existent. It did nothing to block out mum's snoring. The next morning we all got up late on account of sleeping in and got started on breakfast(or rather mum cooked breakfast and muttered to herself, loudly, about how lazy everyone else was). The electric fry pan she was cooking pancakes on didn't work so well for pancakes. As soon as you put the batter on the surface it was on the surface and there was nothing you could do. My Dad and siblings had scrambled pancakes and rather than murdering our batter(Mum and I are coeliac) Mum and I had toast instead.

We walked outside and packed the car ready to go again, back to Leura to go to the lolly shop. The Lolly Shop at Leura is a magical place for even the eldest of people. There are all kinds of gummy, yummy, goodness hidden in wooden crannies in the walls along with all sorts of chocolate, boiled lollies, nerds, sherbet, you name it, they got it. It looks as though its been transplanted from the Victorian era then packaged in little plastic bags. We spent about $40 or something between the five of us and got all kinds of sweets. Which we then shared for the long drive to Parkes, stopping along the way for photos of the country-side and lunch. I was looking out the window the whole time admiring the trees wrapped in fog, the iron-orange rocks and bright red soil. It was beautiful, magical and I'd only ever seen photographs and thought them edited to all hell. We stopped off at a vineyard to try some wine despite having no idea about it. That was kind of fun. The vines looked really pretty. I got a photo of them through a window. We bought some wine and kept driving. We spent that night in a cabin and had pizza for dinner.

You should have seen the looks we were given at breakfast the next morning. It was kinda funny. It wasn't that obvious to us we were outsiders but everyone kinda knew each other apart from us so we got stared at pretty hard. We had a nice breakfast and chattered to each other for a bit. That was kinda fun but there was a bit of bickering too. We were excited though because we were going to see something my Dad had always wanted to see: The Parkes Radio Telescope. It was very cool. The road to get to the telescope was unpaved and went past fields or sunflowers. They were very beautiful. I got a few cool photos of the sun flowers and the road but they were a bit blurry. The dish was massive. My brother reckons he could see three lines drawn on the centre of it so the researchers could play cricket like in the movie but I didn't believe him. I wanted to get a shot of everyone wit their backs to me looking up at the dish but they kept escaping.
In the garden outside the dish there was two little dishes facing each other. The idea was that you could whisper at one and hear it at the other and vice versa. It was awesome! That had to be one of the best bits. We played with those little dishes for ages.

The dish is a working radio telescope that was used to help co-ordinate and broadcast video of the moon-landing. Now it looks for new kinds of stars predicted by Albert Einstein to prove his theory of relativity, listen to pulsars, try and find more out about the big bang and many more projects. The dish is very cool and the console the movie people made for filming, then donated is also very cool, as my siblings and dad can attest. They also had a room with an astronomy photography exhibit. Some of the photos were kinda boring because I don't like to edit my photos too much but some were cool. We spent about an hour and a bit looking at the dish and the museum then we got back in the car to go to Tullamore.

The road to Tullamore was incredible. I got my best photo for the whole trip on this road. It was gravel. Yup, gravel. Picture sore bums, muddy feet and dust in all sorts of strange places. There were kangaroos, goannas and snakes to avoid running over, which no one believed me would be a problem till they were. I was very sad when we ran over a red-belly-black snake. The goannas were quick enough to get out of the way but that snake was sluggish because it was late morning at this point. That road was really fun to go hurtling down(at the speed limit...maybe...God knows if Dad's driving). We were just getting to the turn off for Tullamore and Kirri goes "EMU!!!!!" and she was right. There was an emu that someone was keeping as a pet in one of the fields we were passing. It ran along-side us for a while and then stopped when its fence stopped it. I will never forget watching it, long strides, feathers thrown back like a cape, keeping pace, car and huge bird locked together, one fence out of place to knock away the balance.

Tullamore was a tiny town in the middle of no-where that the receptionist at the cabins in Mt Victoria had told us were playing host to an Irish festival. My mum hadn't done any more research than that so we had missed the parade and not realised it would cost us $150 all up to get in. We quickly gave up on that idea and went to the "cafe" for a snack. Walking into a carpeted, almost empty cafe, with cream carpeting and a baby's playpen at the front is a bit disconcerting as it feels like you are walking, uninvited, into someone's house. The owner was very friendly though. He told us that the population of Tullamore is 300 and swells to 1000 for the Irish Festival every year. It is a very strange sight when you come from the city to see an empty street with a few little shops, most of them empty, closed down or shut with what looks like a strange version of tumble weed rolling around. I wanted to get a photo but I was saving the last 6 shots of my film for the zoo.

The tumble weed like stuff was very strange. At first we thought it was wheat chaff but then we realised that the strands were sometimes joined around a central point. It gathered in huge drifts on the side of the road, trapped in tree branches. When you drove through some of the drifts they exploded into the air, slowly and gracefully. It was the strangest and coolest thing I had ever seen. The radiator was full of the things when we got to Dubbo.

Dubbo was a lot bigger than Tullamore but not much bigger than Parkes. We ate at an Indian Restraunt after going for a walk to work out the kinks. The Indian food actually wasn't too bad. I had a massaman curry with rice. I got a shot of a side street in the centre of Dubbo. It looks so different to a side street in the centre of the city. We stayed at a nice Motel that night and my brother and I sat up watching E.T while Mum and Dad went to the bar and my sister ignored us again. We went to sleep furtively(well I did), we were going to the Zoo tomorrow!!

Easter Sunday dawned warm and bright and Mum had gotten up early and was waking us all up, complaining about laziness again. She left while my Dad was in the shower for breakfast and my sister followed while my brother was in the shower. Dad and I chose to wait for him so we could all go together. Breakfast for me was gluten free bread with honey. It was tasty. The zoo was massive. There were 3-4 types of rhinoceros and I tried desperately not to show off about how much I knew about them. My favourite animals were the quokkas and the otters. They were both very cute and playful. We also bumped into some friends by accident. Hundreds of kilometres from home we bump into friends at a massive zoo on Easter Sunday. Who knew right? I loved the elephants and the wallabies too. The wallabies were extra cool because you were allowed to wander into their cage to pet them.

After we finished at the zoo we drove off to Wombian. We stayed at a really dodgy pub with good tea facilities and a nice balcony that reeked of cigarettes. I stayed in one room with my brother, my sister had a room to herself and my parents also had a room to themselves. We ate dinner at the local RSL. They made a mean Thai fried rice. I stayed in my room to watch Phantom of the Opera and my brother abandoned me to watch Big Bang Theory in my sister's room. We went to sleep at 11pm.

The next morning we had breakfast at macdonalds. I also went out in search of more film as I had completely run out at the zoo the day before. Then we got in the car again to Wombian caves. The caves are very interesting but the best bit was the guide. He was a geologist who knew almost everything there was to know about the place. He told us about the bats, who's fossilised poo the people who discovered the caves had come in search of. The poo contains phosphorus, without which crops will not grow in Australia, or not well anyway. He told us about the fact that despite the poo being unusable they harvested it anyway to get people to buy stocks in the company harvesting it. He also showed us the millions of bones and fossils that were found preserved in the mud in the cave. That was the best part. The pile of bones at the exit was very cool too. I picked up a portion of humerus and an ulnar of two different species and put them together. The guide was very impressed at our questions(Yes, there is such a thing as a stupid question, it's just not nice to say so). The guide also told us about the students who come to the caves to sort through the mud every summer. I would love to volunteer!

It was a long drive home with a brief pit stop in Lithgow for fuel. The mountains were again wreathed in fog and tree wrapped in a blanked of mystery. The wet air was a stark contrast to the dry earth further west. Some of the trees were blackened by bush fires, unimaginable in the rain. It was dark by the time we got home. I liked our holiday.