Hello all,

Thought I’d put up a few snaps from today’s travels. Surf situation on the far north coast is not good. Pretty windblown and only some weak and tiny windswell along the Ballina-Lennox stretch. Only people we saw in the water were a few diehards catching knee high dribblers at Boulder.

The trip from Arrawarra to Lennox was uneventful. However we did stop at New Italy for a bit of a look around.

New Italy: David watching some more tourists wander in from the carpark.

I’ve been going past that sign for over 30 years now, and this is the first time I’ve stopped to see what’s there. Those of you who have stopped will know that it’s a small historical site that records in some detail an Italian settlement that thrived there from the late 19th into the early 20th century. It’s an interesting story that begins with a fraudster selling poor Italian farmers plots of land in an imaginary Kingdom located, he said, in the Bismark archipelago.

There are lots of exhibits of miscellaneous bits of old stuff along with copious explanations about not only the history of the settlement, but Italy itself. We checked it out for awhile before grabbing some pretty okay coffee and heading north again.

When we were approaching Broadwater (y’know that stretch where the Pacific Highway slims down to its original two-lane shoulderless design), I noticed a mildly amusing juxtaposition…

Mildly amusing juxtaposition

As we got up toward Ballina, the skies got darker and the showers more frequent. Happily they lifted at least briefly so that I could grab a snap of that timeless monument to human civilisation that is the Giant Prawn. I must say it seems gradually to be turning into an alibino Giant Prawn…

Who you lookin' at? The Prawn God of Ballina

The wind was going along briskly and the sky was once more turning very dark when we walked out along the groin at North Wall for a closer look.  I noticed a little memorial to which a bunch of flowers beaded with the recent rain had recently been added. My guess is that it may be to the young chap who was killed by a shark there a year or so ago.

North Wall memorial

More rain coming, North Wall Ballina

We made one more stop, this time at Boulder beach where, as noted earlier, half a dozen blokes were manfully persevering against tremendous ordinaryness as they sought to extract tiny amounts of energy from the anemic little windswell. The rain started to come down more steadily and we made for our tidy rented digs in Lennox.

Boulder blinder late Monday arvo.

Go well!