Friday, July 27, 2012

27 July 2012 - Lismore Lake Holiday Park, Northern Rivers, NSW


The rain had cleared by morning however the weather was forecasted to improve even more in the days ahead; we decided to hang about Lismore itself for the day.  

The Bunnings hardware warehouse is just up the road and always a man’s paradise even if nothing is needed; a bit like a lolly shop for the regular guy. We did need several items and before we knew it, our basket was full and the till strip was long; cans of paint for rust already appearing on the jerry can holders (not so great after all, Paul Winmill) and for the airconditioner still needing touch up, along with wire straps to secure the jerry cans.

In following with our normal practice, after spotting the word Lookout on the map, we found our way up to Robinson’s Lookout on Girards Hill, to get our bearings. This must be a pretty place in the heat of the summer, to picnic in the shade of the tall trees all about, especially if the council gardeners have recently been. For us today, it offered nothing but a wilderness for creepy crawlies and impossible views; a Clayton’s lookout.

We called into the Information Centre again and chatted at length with the same very friendly assistant I had dealt with yesterday, coming away with a good idea of where and what to do over the next few days. Our first port of call was the Lismore Regional Gallery, housed in a rather small two story building. According to general descriptions of this gallery, their collection includes works by Margaret Olley, Brett Whiteley, Patricia Piccinini, all of which I was keen to see. Instead the three small galleries open to the public today were exhibitions which in our opinion fitted well with the suited pretentious prats posing as curators rushing about the place:

1-      An art project titled Survivor by contemporary Indonesian-Australian artist Dadang Christanto, centred around the hot volcanic mud that wiped out eleven villages and destroyed many lives in East Java.  A film of models holding pictures of victims of the environmental disaster standing on a muddy set just doesn’t do it for me.

2-      Leonie Lane’s work titled Bananas, Business and Bocce – The Lismore Italians is a memorial to the migrants to the area. Digital prints adhered to the walls and random exhibits like a pair of old shoes, a table and chairs and a few descriptions here and there might be better suited to a museum rather than being described as art.

3-      Fiona Foley’s Bliss is a film showing pretty poppies blowing in the breeze apparently representing the history of the 1897 Aboriginals Protection and Restriction of the Sale of Opium Act. Deadly obscure to the likes of us, but then it all comes down to the fact that neither of us as a degree in Art appreciation and so what would we know?

In fact, I really wonder why I even bothered to record the above when it pleased me not at all? Perhaps as a warning to any who might be wondering whether it is all worth the effort.

Needless to say, it was a delight to find ourselves in the nearby museum administered by the Richmond River Historical Society, open five days a week. Fortunately for us, today was Friday and the doors were open. Here we discovered really good exhibits of all matters pertaining to Lismore and the Richmond Valley, particularly impressed with those relating to the waterways and the timber-getting.

Lismore is 125 kilometres up river from Ballina on the coast, or thirty five kilometres by car today. The Wilson River which is joined by the Lycester Creek here at Lismore, flows south to join the  mightier Richmond River; Lismore being the furthermost navigable port. In 1845 a couple by the name of Wilson took up land here and named their station Lismore after an island in Scotland they had visited on their honeymoon. This is a particularly delightful gem when you see a photograph of this couple taken in their later years. But then we all looked attractive in our youth and one should exercise one’s imagination more.

The town of Lismore was established on this site in 1856 and incorporated as a municipality in 1879, later proclaimed a city in 1946.

The river which had been useful as a highway for the timber, much of which was rafted down to Ballina, and for the export of agricultural produce, was also the bane of people’s lives. Floods fill the great river basin, or wok as the girl in the Information Centre described it, on a fairly regular basis. The worst one in more recent history occurred in 1974, but it was not until 2005 that flood banks were constructed to withstand all future such deluges. Just weeks after the levee was completed, the river threatened to submerge the town once more and 9,000 residents were evacuated. It proved to be a false alarm although did test the efficiency of the SES. However the banks are lower than the flood level of 1974, so it just a matter of time until history is revisited.

We retreated to a well-manicured park by the riverside and ate our lunch, listening to the loud cries of the crows in the trees above, and then returned to the CBD and wandered about this very busy city. People were everywhere, most of the shops busy with customers and even when we found the Coles supermarket in the Lismore Shopping Centre at some distance from the centre of the city, we found that too busy with shoppers.

It was still only mid-afternoon when we returned to camp; I set about cooking a big batch of spaghetti bolognaise sauce and Chris pottered about installing and working with his earlier purchases.

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