20210413 NSW Barraba

20210413 We wake to a freezing morning of about 2 degrees in the van and -5 degrees outside and after breakfast I placed my bowl in the washing up dish when I noticed the water was frozen, yep it's bloody cold.  With our black tank filling we have to leave to flush it out so after we pack up we head to Barraba about 6 ks down the road and book into a caravan park to catch up on some much needed washing.  Barraba is a small town on the Manilla River with many buildings, dating from the turn of the century.

As we enter the town the first thing we noticed was the painted silo, the community came together to get a mural on the 40-metre-high silos in an attempt to attract more tourists to the village. The painted depicts a water diviner, a practice still used in parts of Australia where farmers believe they can find water with two metal rods or, as pictured in the mural, sticks.

Bobby is his name or Bob, the owner of the caravan park and a real have a chat, he told many a yarns about his life but he also told us about a great Chinese Restaurant at the bowls club, yum that us for dinner. When at the bar ordering a drink the lady serving us had to look twice, OMG you could be mistaken for Bob's brother and you even were the same cloths, then she asked if she could get a photo of them together. Before leaving the club I walked up to Bob and said, Gee I nearly went home with the wrong man as we all cracked up laughing.

The Commercial Hotel was Built is 1878 and to this day still serves the public with a warm welcome.

In 1924 the town's distinctive Memorial Clock was erected to commemorate local men killed in World War I, of the 186 who enrolled, 40 were killed.

It was in 1792 a William Murdoch, a Scottish inventor, equipped his home with pipes that delivered coal gas to lamps, giving birth to “gas lighting.

Walking the street of Barraba when we came upon this weapon, it has a dodge grill but I'm not so sure about the rest, but check out that exhaust pipe, legal, I think not.

It's a V8 motor that much I do know.

This is what I call a bloody huge cauliflower and at the cost of $4,99, we would pay that for a quarter of that back home.

20210413 I so wanted to go and check out the Woodsreef asbestos mine but there was no way Des was going anywhere near it, he's such a chicken, but then I read it was out of bounds so I read up on the site and found some great photo's and information.  

Mill House during demolition, The Woodsreef asbestos mine near Barraba, N.S.W commenced production from 1919 to 1970, it was a small-scale asbestos mining facility that changed in 1970 when the Chrysotile Corporation of Australia grew the mine into a large-scale operation which ran from 1970 to 1983 and mined 100 million tonnes of asbestos-rich rock.

The mine was closed and abandoned in 1983 leaving a 117-acre of contaminated site, now a dump site containing a 70-meter-tall pile of 25 million tonnes of contaminated waste rock still remains.  The N.S.W Government donated $6.3 million to address the health, safety and environmental issues at the mine including the containment of processed asbestos the removal of the mill building, silos, and administration buildings and implementation of a comprehensive air quality monitoring program and health risk assessment before, during and following remediation works closure of the mine.

Bob told me some stories of when he worked at the mine and on there last day he wrote a song and danced on the table singing:

 "The Woodsreef Miner's Lament"

(to the tune of click go'es the shears)

We worked at the mine for many a long year

Earned plenty of money and drank plenty of beer

The crunch has finally come and many must depart

But those of us who care leave with a troubled heart

Chorus

Click go the gates boys, click, click, click

Our time here is over no more blasting in the pitt

Harry looks around the drought has dealt a deadly blow

No matter if it rains now we've run out of bloody dough

The song go'es on for another three chorus so I wont bore you with the rest but it was really well done.

We were saying our good buys to Bob when this bloody hawk flew down and landed in a tree directly above us, then we notices a birds nest and the hawk was after the babies.

And yes, he flew off with a full belly, now that's what I call " survival".

And That Was Our Time In Barraba N.S.W