Read, Write, Ramble

 The weather turned on its best for us this morning; warm and brilliant sunshine with cloudless skies for the first time this week. We tried to get to the local farmer’s market, but hadn’t realised it began at 7am and was all done and dusted by 9:30! Never-mind, we regrouped and found a corner of the island previously unexplored.  The Two Chimneys Reserve was well worth the drive along the pot-holed roads typical of the island. Every view of the coastline has something different to offer. The one thing that remains unchanged is the brilliantly clear azure-blue water.  We drove down to Ball Bay and then on to Kingston Jetty to check whether there were any fishing boats out today. The windy weather early in the week had prevented the boats going out. Apparently however, incoming fishing boats bring with them a frenzy of hungry sharks which can be viewed from the jetty, so we were excited to see an empty boat trailer for the first time this week   At St Barnabas Chapel ...

We woke to dark clouds this morning, and it wasn’t long before they were dropping rain on us. We had not had any real plans for today, so stayed indoors, read, chatted and relaxed, until finally the rain eased and we were lured out to find some lunch.  We returned to the Golden Orb for lunch and, in the absence of two savoury muffins, we shared both a savoury muffin and a blueberry muffin. After satisfying our hunger we set out to find the only winery on the island - Two Chimneys Winery.  Our host and vigneron, Rod, took us through the range of wines, which are mainly produced in Port Macquarie, NSW, using the limited crop of grapes he is able to produce on the island, in conjunction with New South Wales grown grapes. The wines were very nice and of course we each felt compelled to buy a bottle.  With our bottles of wine in hand, we then needed to go back to the shops in Burnt Pine in order to find a suitable container to carry said wine onto the plane!  Back home ag...

We set out, after a slow start to the morning, and some mundane chores like washing, to explore the 100 Acre Wood. I was sure we would find some of A.A.Milne’s famous characters there. It turned out however that the NI version is actually the Hundred Acres Reserve and while there were some impressive Morton Bay Figs with their ‘flying buttresses’ and a plethora of birdlife as well as the tallest tree fern in the world, there was no Winnie, Piglet, Tigger, or even Eeyore. In fact, with the exception of the nomadic cow population and the feral chooks, NI is severely lacking in ground-dwelling animals.  Once we had enjoyed the quiet wooded walk, the silence broken only by the terns flying in from the sea and resting briefly in the treetops, and been mesmerised by the broiling sea, viewed from a number of cliff-edge vantage points, we returned to the car and moved on to explore Bumbora Bay accessed via a very well-made board walk which took us to the rocky beach favoured by ‘boardrider...

We both slept in this morning - exhausted by battling against the wind yesterday, I’m sure. Anyway, once we were up and going we set off into town to sort out some confusion about a glass bottomed boat tour. To cut a long story short, we had received a message under our door mat yesterday informing us that our glass bottomed boat tour had been cancelled for that afternoon. The confusion arose from the fact that our tour had been booked for today, not yesterday.  At the Pinetree Tours office, we established there had been an error and we were in fact on today’s tour which would go ahead as scheduled, the wind thankfully, having eased somewhat. With this, we drove to the Botanic Gardens and enjoyed an hour wandering around the understory and learning the names of some of the indigenous plants. Fiona also managed to spot the elusive Norfolk Island green parrot 🦜 and I took a couple of almost unidentifiable photos as evidence!   We went to the lovely Golden Orb Cafe for our morni...

This morning we opted to choose our own adventure and explore the northwest coast; an area not covered in the Orientation Tour yesterday.  It was my turn to drive, so once I had convinced my left leg it didn’t have a role to play, we took off in our zippy little hire car, heading out of town and up steep, windy, pot-holed roads, to reach Captain Cook’s Lookout on one of the most northerly points of the island.  After about 20 minutes (the speed limit on the island is 50, so there’s no going anywhere fast), we found ourselves enjoying spectacular vistas as we took the short walk to Cook’s Monument and the viewing platform beyond. From here we overlooked the rocky outcrops that provide the breeding grounds for a variety of seabirds, and the vast expanse of ocean beyond.  As we meandered our way back we stopped at a couple more vantage points, one of which, Puppy’s Point, we shared with a nonchalant herd of grazing cows. Under the British system of free range grazing rights,...

As the car drove behind the reversing bus, our driver made the comment that despite all the signs on the bus saying ‘do not overtake turning vehicle,’ etc, there was a driver who was ‘in a hurry going nowhere!’ A situation which struck me as being something I didn’t expect to encounter in what I anticipated to be a more relaxed approach to life on this remote island   We were on our morning orientation tour of Norfolk Island on a somewhat windy and showery day, conditions which were in direct conflict with the advertised mild island weather. With the prevailing conditions in mind, it was probably a good day to be in a bus traversing the island accompanied by the knowledgeable commentary of our driver.  We drove firstly around historic Kingston built when the island became a penal colony, all the while being entertained with interesting stories of unfair administrators and the cruel treatment of prisoners who were sent here for ‘the term of their natural life,’ which meant that...

 No, it’s not Italy, but, getting to Norfolk Island has proven to be an adventure in itself and this quaint island does seem to hold a great deal of promise.  And yes, I was meant to be in Italy at this point in time, however with that trip postponed until 2025, due to circumstances beyond our control, my friend Fiona and I decided to make the best of a disappointing situation and take ourselves on a week away in lieu of Tuscany.  Hence we found ourselves rising at 4am this morning in the Holiday Inn at Melbourne airport, where we availed ourselves of the courtesy bus which ferried us to the airport in plenty of time for our 6am flight to Sydney.  Having ascertained that our luggage was indeed checked all the way through to Norfolk Island, we threaded our way through security and settled in for an airport-style breakfast, at huge cost. It was tasty however, and the coffee was not only particularly good, but also much needed   Our flight left on time and conseque...