Author: johblogs

Wollongong Trip – Cooma to Nowra

We left Cooma quite late and had to shop for socks at Rivers as Andy hadn’t packed enough! We drove to Braidwood for a late lunch in the park and had a stroll down the historic streets there. They had a great display on the local National Parks and Architectural features of the town, which had buildings from many eras.
We headed through Morton National Park on our way to Nowra. It was like driving in the clouds and we stopped and checked out a beautiful waterfall in the late afternoon.

We camped on the river at Nowra and read and had an early night. I was woken a couple of times by young people celebrating New Years Eve, and the next day I waited for the decent hour of morning to arrive before phoning my kids to ensure they had survived the revelry.

Wollongong Trip – Mt Kosciusko

We spent our next day at Kosciusko National Park. Andy wanted to do the walk to Mt Kosciusko, which was a 20km round trip.We were departing from Charlotte’s Pass.

I opted for the walk to the glacial lake, which was 8km return. I think I stopped about a km short. It was really steep and being as unfit as I am I kept looking back at the steep downward slope I had come down at the start and knowing that was going to be at the end, wore me down mentally. Andrew’s walk was a round trip so he had to come up that climb at the end and admitted it was the steepest part of the walk.

As we headed back to Jindabyne to go through on our way to Cooma, a hail storm struck. It was amazing that only a few days ago we had been worried about bushfires. I believe the bushfires eventually got to Kosciusko National Park earlier this month.

We stayed in a motel at Cooma as we were tired and the thought of camping didn’t appeal.

McNaughts Comet

Last night we saw the comet in the sky and it was a thrill. My son was away from home so I phoned him and via our mobile phones heard the joy in his voice when he spotted it as he and his friends had also rushed outside and searched the skies. It was great.
I remember when the kids were little I would wake them in the early hours of the morning to go outside and look for this or that heavenly body passing in the night skies. It was fun. I adore seeing a shooting star.
This picture on flickr (which I have not participated in at all, but must one day!)captures what we saw brilliantly. There are a pile of pictures on flickr here. Some of them are quite amazing and wonderful.
I got out my binoculars Andy gave me for Christmas last year, they are great and had a good look at it. It was fun. It was a wow moment.
Jonathon Cainer discusses the astrological significance of the comet in his 2007 The Year Ahead Article among other things.