TUESDAY 9 FEBRUARY     EVANS HEAD

The rain continued through the day, though it eased more to showers later on.

We set out on a drive to Rosebank, which is up in hilly country NE of Lismore, inland from Bangalow. Some years ago, when we were visiting C, he had sent us up here to look at a small timber milling operation where he sourced camphor laurel for his furniture making. We visited it then as a long day trip from our camp at Coffs Harbour. John wanted to revisit the place. It is really a one person timber yard, specializing in the fine timbers of the area, of which there are several.

We drove via back roads mostly, from Broadwater. It was an extremely interesting drive, initially through farming country. The Alstonville area looked really attractive. I bought some eggs and tomatoes at the hobby farm of a lovely old man who really wanted us to linger and talk.

North of Alstonville the roads became more winding; there were still some great farms but also rainforest stands. We had to cross two running creek fords. One was really quite fast and one would not tackle it in a conventional car. I hoped we didn’t have to come back this way! The smell of the countryside here was wonderful.

We found the timber place, which is on a back road out of the Rosebank hamlet. John remembered the way, as we got closer, which was fortunate because I certainly didn’t, and we were really out in the sticks.

The timber man was a nice guy, much younger than us. He specializes in red cedar, rosewood and camphor laurel. This latter is great for blanket boxes, knitwear storage  and the like, because moths don’t like it. As the name would suggest! The tree is an introduced species which has now been declared a noxious weed in these parts. As a result, the timber will become increasingly hard to obtain. It is a strongly patterned wood.

The man gave us the idea of making over our kitchen at home, using camphor laurel, especially for the bench top. We looked at one he’d done in his house. He had left the sides naturally curved, too, which was interesting. He had mixed up his timbers, using rosewood in a panel at the base of drawers and in other areas. I thought it would have worked better without the assortment. He uses polyurethane to seal his timber bench tops, several coats thereof, which he rubs in. He sells the camphor laurel for about $60 a square metre. I think the timber is too strongly patterned for use in a large area – I prefer more subtlety, I think. Still, it is an idea.

We returned to camp via Lismore. This was faster and mostly through farmland.

We just had time left in the day for a walk on the beach. There was a lot of foam at the high tide line, built up from the recent high seas. This was really sticky stuff. It was blowing about in the wind. Where it landed there was a brown stain left, residue from the tannin in the river water, going out to sea, we thought. Or maybe just from the soil colour staining the river water.

There were some men fishing from the beach, trying to jag live mullet to use for bait.

It was not all that pleasant walking in those conditions, so we didn’t make it a long walk.

Tea was chicken noodle soup, steak, mushrooms, vegies, followed by rockmelon.

Today’s was an excellent outing. I loved the country we traversed. We drove 153 kms.