Taree
Taree
Taree is a little town in the Manning Valley. Known mostly for agriculture and boat building, it is also a fine base for tourists to explore the nearby mountains and coastline. And the Manning River, which usually flows sedately down to the Tasman Sea 17 kilometers downstream.
This year was different. The extreme rains in March caused the Manning river to swell to over eight meters higher than normal in some spots. In Taree, it peaked at 5.65 meters above normal, falling just short of the record 6 meters set in 1929. An entire house, complete with patio, was seen floating down river at Taree at the height of the flood. The river swept up many other unusual items, a shipping container among them, and rammed them into the Martin Bridge, which is the major access point to Taree from the south. It was damaged and remains closed, with no timeline for its reopening. Interestingly, the Taree Aquatic Club was inundated with water and it too will be closed indefinitely.
Cleanup continues.
Whee!
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Nambucca Heads, or Ngambugka, Entrance to the Waters, in Gumbaynggirr.
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Trial Bay. Named for the 1816 brig The Trial, ironically stolen by convicts and wrecked here. Conveniently close to the jail.
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Farms around Kinchela Creek. They grow a lot of spiders here.Just over to the right on the Macleay River is the site of the former Kinchella Boys Home. Built on land taken from the Dunghutti people, it was home to boys also taken from the Dunghutti people. The Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation (KBHAC) now runs a survivor-led outreach program to provide help with the social, emotional, cultural and spiritual wellbeing of KBH survivors. |
Lime is an inorganic mineral containing Calcium Carbonate. You can get it from limestone or chalk, or in a pinch from oyster shells. If you were to layer it with wood and coal inside a large oven, or kiln, and then burn it, it would chemically change from Calcium Carbonate into Calcium Oxide and expel Carbon Dioxide in a process known as Calcination. Calcium Oxide, or unslaked lime, is extremely dangerous - it wants very much to absorb water. The water inside you would do. So unslaked lime is generally slaked by the addition of just enough water to keep it a powder, but a much more agreeable powder called Calcium Hydroxide.The powder you have just made by these steps is immensely useful. You can use it to treat wastewater, you can add it to animal feeds, and you can use it to refine sugar. But the earliest use of this product - it has been in use for at least 3,500 years - is as a glue to hold bricks and rocks together. If you mix a little more water and some sand into the powder and expose it to the air, it will draw in Carbon Dioxide and complete its cycle, turning back into Calcium Carbonate. In the process it will glue itself into any rocks it is in contact with. Port Macquarrie is just down the road a ways from here. When they were building it they needed a lot of mortar, so a lime burning enterprise was set up here, in what is now Limeburners Creek National Park. They would collect vast amounts of oyster shell from the nearby sea and river, burn them with the abundant timber found here, and make a very simple cement. The park is also of significance to the Birpai and Dunghutti people, who had no need of mortar. |
And this would be Port Macquarie. Particularly hard hit by the floods, but let's talk about Koalas.Koala "bears" are in fact arborial herbivorous marsupials, the only living member of the family Phascolarctidae, which has had 14 members in the past. Their cousins, to stretch the metaphor, are wombats. The name derives from the Darug word gula, meaning no water. They were seldom seen to leave the trees, so it was thought they never drank water. In fact, they get most of their water from Eucalypt leaves but not all, and they must get water from time to time. But they're not very good at it, and koala dehydration is a major problem. As is well meaning people who give thirsty koalas a drink from their water bottle. This can give the bear pneumonia, as they are not accustomed to water bottles in the wild and have to lap water as a dog would in order to keep the water out of their lungs. Koalas live mainly here in New South Wales, but also in Queensland, Victoria and South Australia. They were hunted sustainably by the indigenous population for millenia, as is evidenced in cave drawings. They were hunted somewhat less sustainably in the early 20th century by Europeans. This led to a public outcry, and now the symbol of Australia is considered vulnerable, which means it is illegal to kill them. The Port Macquarie area is home to one of the largest wild koala populations on the east coast. But along with that honour comes a greater than average number of sick and wounded animals. Threats to wild koalas include land clearing, dog attacks, being hit by a car, diseases (70 percent of wild koalas have chlamydia), drought, and of course, bush fires. 2019 was a particularly bad year for bush fires in Australia. Across Australia, it is estimated that the 2019/20 bush fire season burned a million hectares of land and killed at least 1,000 koalas. Hundreds of those koalas died right here in the area around Port Macquarie when a lightning strike started a blaze which burned over 2,000 hectares of prime koala breeding ground, and all of its residents. In a fire, or any threat really, a koala will climb to the top of whatever tree it is in and curl up into a ball. Even if this peculiar response to a fire doesn't prove fatal all by itself, the climb down a smoldering tree later will likely injure the animal's feet to the extent that it will not be able to climb, and therefore feed, for some time. The Port Macquarie Koala Hospital, in operation since 1973, rallied dozens of volunteers to help koalas injured in these fires. They started a gofundme campaign, which has so far raised almost eight million AUD. They were hoping for twenty-five thousand. So with the windfall, now that the immediate effects of last year's fires are over, they have been able to continue their breeding program to replace the numbers lost in the wild and also set up drinking stations throughout New South Wales. Koalas are quite lethargic, and droughts, especially caused by fires, mean that many of them die from simple thirst. This year, brushfires are the least of anyone's concerns. But there's always next year. |
We'll follow the Manning River up to Taree. The Manning has the distinction of being the only double-delta river in the southern hemisphere, and one of only two world wide (the other is the Nile). A double-delta river is one with two permanent mouths. The Manning is also famous for the critters that swim up it. It is frequented by sharks and dolphins, and in 1994 even by a rare Bryde's whale.Willy the Whale, or Free Willy, was nine meters long. For reasons known only to himself, he swam up the Manning as far as Taree where he spent a couple of months as a tourist attraction before being towed back out to sea by a collaboration of various agencies. In addition to confused whales, the Manning and in particular Manning Point is known as the Australian leg of the Poissons et Boisson Extrême fishing tour. It is an invitation only fishing and drinking challenge started in the lakes of Geneva in the 15th century by bored nobility. |
And here's our stop, Taree. Time to get some oysters.
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Well that's it for today. Tomorrow we're off to the Opera.
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