Incoming rain storms cut the Gundabooka National Park trip short by a day, The Doc still got plenty of images. Here is a selection of budgies. Must click image to see full size (it is worth it).
Major Mitchell Cockatoos, Cockateils, Bourke Parakeets, Chestnut-breasted Quail Thrush, wrens and emus to come in later posts.
The Doc is back in Sydney to deal with registration of the Patrol and the off-road camper. That’s all now done.
Unfortunately, The Doc had to completely rebuild his home PC twice in the last three weeks! The first was caused by a corrupt Windows installation, then two weeks later the boot drive failed.
The Doc is planning his next trip. First, he will explore around the south coast at Bendalong and Bermagui. Then a trip up to Western Plains Zoo at Dubbo, the Pilliga and on to Gundabooka near Bourke.
A Beach-stone Curlew and Masked Lapwing.
In Ballina doing work around the house. Doing plenty of whale watching out the window as the humpbacks head north. Have spent some time with a friend testing flashes and looking for places to do bird photography.
Back to high pressuring cleaning all the concrete and verandas.
Aussie Made No 11: Enerdive are based in Queensland. While some products are sourced from overseas, Enerdrive does manufacture its own range of ePOWER AC battery chargers & DC2DC battery chargers along with their Lithium battery systems: https://enerdrive.com.au/
Aussie Made No 12: Austech Wire & Cable make copper cables for automotive, marine, speakers, irrigation, etc. Automotive cables are sold at retail under the name Owl or Wise Owl on eBay: https://austechwire.com.au/#about
Aussie Made No 13: Tycab Australia’s cable products are used across a broad range of industries, from Automotive, Irrigation, Building, Data & Instrumentation to Security, Marine, Welding, Speaker & Audio and Switchboards. I have used their automotive cables and they are world class: https://www.tycab.com.au/
Aussie Made No 14: SmartBar was the original lightweight plastic bullbar built to absorb an impact and bounce back into shape. They are much more pedestrian friendly in an accident. I have one installed on the Patrol. There is a variety of bars now called SmartBar, StealthBar and SpartanBar: https://smartbar.com.au/
Aussie Made No 15: Rhino Rack makes a vast array of roof racks and accessories right here in Australia. The Patrol has a Pioneer Platform fitted with jerry can holder and spare tyre carrier: https://www.rhinorack.com.au/en-au
Aussie Made No 1: Anyone interested in good tea try Madura. It is my preferred tea brand, won over by great flavours and taste. Made here in Australia, northern NSW to be precise. It does not cost the earth and I now have several flavours to choose from. Great loyalty rewards to reduce the cost even more. Free post for orders over $50. We should support local products more: https://www.maduratea.com.au/
Aussie Made No 2: Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory. A well loved favourite in Christmas Hampers I make up. The red licorice covered in Belgian styled coverture white chocolate is my favourite, followed by milk chocolate red licorice and the Sun Muscat grapes in Dark Chocolate: https://www.greengroveorganics.com.au/the-junee-licorice-and-chocolate-factory/
Aussie Made No 3: Random Harvest Gourmet mustards, sauces and chutneys are some of my favourites. More expensive than some other brands but a wonderful indulgence at Christmas or Easter: https://randomharvestgourmet.com.au/#about
Aussie Made No 4: moving from food to manufactured equipment today. REDARC Australia makes a range of items for the 4×4 market like DC to DC chargers, battery management systems, solar blankets, inverters and gauges. The Doc has a REDARC DC to DC charger and Autron gauges in the Patrol. REDARC bought Autron and relabelled the gauges as REDARC. They make quality goods than can withstand the harsh Outback. Equipment costs more but last, so it costs less in the long run: https://www.redarc.com.au/
Aussie Made No 5: few will have heard of this name, unless you are a caravaner. BMPRO, based in Victoria, makes battery chargers and battery management systems for caravans, RVs and 4X4s. The name is new to me. It was a BMPro MiniboostPro DC to DC charger with solar input I got installed in the Battery Box. The unit is not waterproof, so you cannot install it under the car bonnet, but inside the car or battery box is fine. Made here in Australia, costing less than the REDARC equivalents: https://teambmpro.com/
Aussie Made No 6: interVOLT, based in Western Australia, makes DC-DC Power Conditioners, Battery Equalisers, Voltage Stabilisers and Lighting Dimmers. Their target market was marine use but I had an interVOLT EBI Pro installed in the Patrol. It was a programmable solid-state dual battery controller used to charge the auxiliary battery (recently replaced by the REDARC with a solar input): http://www.intervolt.com/news/
Aussie Made No 7: GME makes UHF radios, aerials, Personal Locator Beacons, etc. all of which I have. I have two GME UHF’s, two aerials and two PLBs. Excellent build quality, great features and good after sales service (had an LED light fixed, UHF was still working). I do not understand why people buy other brands when GME are a world leader in UHF and PBLs. They have never let me down. They have both land and marine versions of their products: https://www.gme.net.au/gme-au
Aussie Made No 8: RFI aerials. Used by many emergency service vehicles in Australia. They have a vast selection of UHF, VHF and mobile aerials. The RFI aerial is attached to one of the GME UHF units (I have two for safety reasons – after a near miss). It works really well: https://www.rfiwireless.com.au/mobile-products.html
Aussie Made No 9: Water in diesel alarm. Winner of the Inventor of the Year Award. It monitors in real time diesel use and sounds an alarm if any water is found in contaminated fuel, allowing you to shut down the engine and drain the water before your engine is damaged. Can be used in cars, boats and generators, it is installed on the Patrol: https://www.waterindiesel.com.au/shop
Aussie Made No 10: LightFORCE makes driving lights, LED bars and spotlights for the world market. The Patrol has two Genesis HID driving lights fitted and a small LED light bar on the rear for light at night. LightFORCE is renowned the world over, a few days ago I saw a set of lights fitted to avalanche clearance plant and equipment in Alaska: https://www.lightforce.com/AUS/
Aussie made 11 to 15 here.
Aussie made 16 to 20 here.
I was born in Melbourne to a family of fruit & vegetable wholesalers. At twenty, I took off for UK to follow my dream of motorsport photography, which I did for these three years with some success. While in the UK I married a pommie nurse, and brought her & her mum out to Oz by sea as 10-pound migrants. (The marriage lasted 31 years which was a fair innings).
Back home, I started a boring career in banking, with a little boost from being sent to Noumea by BNP for three months to optimise my French language skills. While there I realised that people living in capital cities are wasting their lives.
After Noumea, I was sent to Adelaide for four years. I used equity from the sale of my Melbourne house to commission a new 25-foot sailboat, which I raced in the beautiful SA waters, culminating in a fantastic Adelaide-Port Lincoln race, which took my little yacht out into the Great Australian Bight. After a week competing in the local regatta, we had a lovely cruise back to Adelaide, which included sailing amongst a 150 strong school of dolphins for an hour or more. We took turns lying on the foredeck, and stroking the heads of dolphins alongside us as the bow buried into the swells. All us blokey blokes were crying like babies!
When I got transferred to run a branch in North Sydney, I reluctantly had to sell the yacht, and moved as far away from the coast I could to drown out the call of the Lorelei. But (surprise surprise!) I took to chartering yachts on Pittwater, drawing crewmates from a big e-newsletter mailing list to help pay for 40-foot monohulls or 33-foot catamarans. I was staggered to realise that I actually totted up no less than 33 weekend charters, and actually outlasted two owners of Pittwater Yacht Charter, and teaching about 100 people how to sail.
When my marriage fizzled out in 2000, I moved to Dundas in Sydney, and met another pommie nurse via RSVP. We started as a couple but in due course she decided that she would be returning to UK to look after her parents and dote on her young grandson, so our relationship changed into great “best-friends”.
Katie went back to UK in about 2011, and we kept in touch by constantly playing Words with Friends. Anyway, I sold my Sydney unit and cleared the decks and debts, and moved up to Forster in February 2009.
In mid-2012, I made quite a big change in my life, by selling my sporty Subaru WRX STi and buying my sailing trimaran, a Hobie Adventure Island. I started to sail around the Wallis lakes and out to sea. I was involved with a Hobie Facebook page and made more friends.
Schoolhood friends and others friends I had made in the WRX Club and sailing would visit. We would go sailing on the Lakes and I even did an Outback trip. [Part 1 here and Part 2 here.]
I returned to my photography finally, and use to run a part-time business via my website www.scenefromabove.com.au sending a camera up a 40-foot mast or up to 400 feet under a giant kite, for interesting elevated images.
1966 Bowater Paper, Knightsbridge
1967-9 Lazard Bros merchant bank London
1969 Management trainee family fruit & veg wholesale company
1970 Banque Nationale de Paris, Melbourne
1976 BNP Noumea 3 months French language immersion (after 2 years French tuition)
1977-81 BNP Adelaide
1982-85 BNP North Sydney
1985-87 Dai Ichi-Kangyo Australia, Sydney
1988-1995 State Bank NSW, Sydney
1995-2008 Contract IT Project Manager
Part time Self-employed with Scene from Above
Farewell Tony, from your family and friends. A selection of selfies Tony took and were on his computer.
It is a sad moment for me as one of my all-time favourite musicians, Richie Hayward, drummer for Little Feat, died from complications with his liver cancer.
The first live band gig I attended was Little Feat at the Melbourne Stadium in 1976. I was so blown away that I bought a ticket for the 3rd concert too (2nd was sold out), and even when my hearing came back a few days later, I was still in awe.
So I bought their records & CDs, and joined a Little Feat mailing list, where fans could swap their stories. Fast forward to 1997, when a fan was whingeing about “only” seeing the band 12 times… so I decided there and then that I just had to see them again myself.
I emailed the list moderator and asked if he could find out the schedule of the band for about 3 months out, so I could plan a trip to USA. Imagine my amazement when I received an email from Bill Payne, leader of the band, saying that since I was going to so much trouble to see them, the least they could do was have me as their guest! Talk about going weak at the knees!
I booked a trip encompassing ANZAC day and a weekend, meaning I had a 5 day trip only missing 2 working days (important as I was managing a big project at the time).
I flew out to LA and then on to Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. Once in my hotel I walked to the nightclub venue and saw two of the band members unloading stuff from their huge red “rock bus” which was everything the cliché expects, but I was too overwhelmed to introduce myself.
Later on I sat in on the sound check, and say the drummer, Richie Hayward, walking past me, but no, he pulled up a stool to chat with me (I was blushing like a silly school-girl) He waxed lyrical about his last trip down under, and said he had been a passenger in an HQ Holden from Adelaide to Darwin! He had even been on the school of the air. He put me totally at ease…
The show was stunning, and I was almost in the front row, and right then the whole trip was worth it.
Afterwards, the road manager came and got me and led me backstage, announcing “Found him” before we entered the room. There were my seven musical heroes all bearing huge grins! We soon got into small talk mode, and Richie mentioned how he had found this large crescent-shaped beach with awesome sand & surf, and said that anywhere else in the world it would be covered with people, but here there were just the five people in his group. Once I suggested this would be Byron Bay, Bill Payne added there is a recording studio on the northern tip of that beach, where he spent a fortnight working with Art Garfunkel (I can’t top that name-dropping, LOL).
I handed over my “Aussie pack”, which included Violet Crumbles, Vegemite, etc and went back to the hotel hyped up.
Next day I drove the hire car to Austin, and met up with another fan and his wife, who kindly offered me accommodation in their spare bedroom, so I got to experience suburban Texas (trucks in every driveway, etc). We went for lunch at Fothergills, the holder of liquor licence #1 in Texas and the place where Janice Joplin worked as a waitress while at the nearby university.
That night I went to the venue and took my video camera. The band was happy for me to make a video of the show so I took full advantage, and moved around in front and behind the stage. At one point, the bass player, Ken Gradney, dragged me on stage from behind a curtain and attempted to get us in a two-shot with my camera in the middle of a song! Cool! I had a big chat with Paul Barrere the lead guitarist, about getting the band to come back to Australia.
My gift this time was a bottle of OP Bundy rum.
Next day it was off to Houston, driving past endless rows of oil wells and fifth-wheeler horse floats. I got lost in Houston due to road-works, and when I arrived at the Band’s hotel, the road manager expressed relief and said there were worried faces in the band about my non-arrival.
The gig this time was an outdoor one, and as it was drizzling, I was invited to wait with the band in the bus. – yup the clichéd classic sign of the world of rock and roll. Inside, there was a huge kitchen/lounge area, and then about a dozen railway-style bunks, finishing with a private room at the rear which was definitely not explained. Soon, the band’s female lead signer, Shaun Murphy, offered me cookies she have made in the kitchen (not the tough R&R image ). My gift this time was the coffee table book “Australia the greatest island” a pictorial record of a journey by three light planes around the coastline.
The gig was once again simply awesome, and I was very reluctant to say goodbye and head on home.
Once I got home, Bill suggested that I channel my enthusiasm into helping to get a world-wide “Feat fans” grassroots movement going, to help the band grow, and help support local gigs. So I found myself in charge of Feat Fans for everywhere except in USA! Ambitious eh?
I tried to get them to Australia, and even found an entrepreneur prepared to put up some money, but his idea was a low-key clubs & pubs tour, which was definitely beneath the band’s status as one of the US’s all-time classic rock & roll bands.
A few years later, the band announced they were performing in the 2001 Blues & Roots festival in Byron Bay. Awesome! I rented a fancy town-house and got a few other fans to join us there to share the costs.
I met them at their hotel in Ballina, and it was like a family reunion, with warm hugs all round.
I organised a small afternoon party for the band in Byron, and laid on the Aussie cliché for them, with beer in the washing machine, fairy bread, Balmain bugs, etc and those members of the band who made it enjoyed it. Happiest moment for me was seeing two of the band sitting outside under a grass-roof gazebo, discussing their home renovations – just the easy-going atmosphere I had hoped to create…
The gigs on the two nights were incredible, with about 13,000 fans overfilling the giant circus tent and rocking away in a surging mass to the music. We watched from back stage, and Peter Garrett joined us, and clearly loved the show too.
Next day we drove back to Sydney, where we enjoyed another great gig at the Metro Theatre.
Next day, I joined the band on a flight to Melbourne and one of the 15-20 US fans who came to Australia with the band kindly paid for a room for me and another fan who came down with me from Byron. This time the gig was at the Melbourne Casino, and yet again, I was in heaven…
At this point I was supposed to go back home to Sydney, but my enthusiasm got the better of me, so I booked a flight and joined the band in Auckland, New Zealand! As this was unplanned, I had no accommodation, but the road-manager let me sleep on a sofa in his room. So, I got another fix!
Sadly, Richie died in 2010, but he secretly coached his drum technician Abe, to take his place when he got too sick to continue. Typical wonderful consideration all the band showed for each other.
I also got to see them again in 2011, when they performed at the State Theatre in Sydney, along with Leon Russell. It was great to catch up, and swap notes with bass guitarist Ken Gradney about hip replacements, as his wife has had several. We are all getting older!
So, I do qualify as one of the oldest groupies around? LOL
A good friend, Tony Stott, recently passed away after a long illness. I will be posting images over the coming weeks in memory of Tony.
I meet Tony through the NSW WRX Club over 20 years ago. We shared a common interest in the WRX and driving more generally. We stayed in contact and often spoke about cars, boats and travel.
I sometimes met up when I drove past Forster going north, more than once at the Nabiac Roadhouse around 1am! I drove into Forster to have lunch every so often.
In 2014 I took Tony on a trip to remote parts of Australia which he enjoyed immensely. I will get to those images later. Let’s go back a few years.
In the late 1960’s Tony travelled to Europe by ship and took images of various races including the F1 at Monaco. Tony took these images curb side with no safety barriers – how things have changed. I scanned those images a few years ago.
In memory of Tony I present some F1 images from Monaco.
The Doc had to replace the Patrol’s auxiliary battery charger, with a new Redarc 1225D which has a solar panel input. The Doc purchased a 100w Giant Solar panel (which uses A grade solar cells) and installed it himself on the roof rack, allowing space for the recovery tracks, jerry can and second spare tyre.
The wiring goes along the bottom of the roof rack to the gutter. The wiring then goes down the gutter behind the snorkel (visible on the right), through some body work just in front of the windscreen into the engine bay and plugs into the Redarc 1225D.
The panel is secured by six M10 eye bolts to the roof rack (five are visible in the image below). Six M12 bolts fix the panel to the brackets. The brackets are 4mm thick. The roof rack should come off before the panel ever does!
The panel has been working well and keeping the auxiliary battery topped up, with power to spare. The Doc has been using this extra power to charge various household batteries in the Patrol.
The Doc is now testing battery monitors with their iPhone & Android Apps to get real time data on battery condition. The Patrol’s Autron voltage gauges only work when the car is turned on. It is part of an ongoing project to extend battery life of the Patrol’s starter and auxiliary batteries. EDIT: battery monitor review is here.
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