...you probably have sat in a main street coffee shop...

last night was the '60 minutes earth hour'...recommended to turn off all lights and any electric power consumption from 8.30 to 9.30pm... 

so while the new south wales election ballot papers were being counted (presumably in total darkness), left the blackout home to kill time... had a peek in the window of cobargo main street coffin shop... the sign says: 'macabre board box...hand painted and decorated coffins!...a little unusual, a little zany, slightly crazy and maybe a little irreverent but we like to think 'outside the box' in cobargo'... phone lorraine or beth...

cobargo coffin shop ©280315

no wife no horse no...

...'no wife no horse no moustache' ...probably one of the most creative names for a shop... 

has been a second-hand shop, a woodworking workshop, a local produce grocery store... and now a dog-grooming parlour...

main street cobargo, princes highway, south coast ©280315

b is for bird

      mimosa rocks national park, south coast ©080115 +2elusivewatermarks

a is for across

    bridge, tathra-bermagui rd. ©210115

                                                                               brogo ©291114

...it was a beautiful ride from bega and chester fittleworth arrived in high spirits at nan's in time for puftaloons and tea...

 ...moruya is dangerously losing its charm...it's also getting too supermarkety...

like you can almost see a battle going on between the chains... it does, however, hide the only asian grocery section, albeit a small one tucked in a fruit and deli shop, anywhere from batesman bay to bega and beyond... 

one of two panels outside a shop                                

across the bridge, the pub that used to have guinness doesn't anymore and the barstaff who offered something else got a little irate when her suggestion was turned down... then back across the bridge to town and down below in the very clear water of moruya river, you can see a dozen big flatheads swimming about with not a single fisherperson in sight... 

...a local recommends avoiding the only vietnamese chinese restaurant...the hennessey coffee serves good cuppa and for $4 the service was pleasant...sipping the long black, you wish that the view is more palatable than the car lot across...the best views of the moruya riverfront seem reserved for carparks and public toilets and hidden from patrons of the adelaide by high brickwalls...who plans this space?

palms in the carpark

 ©230315

                                                    just before the turn-off to quaama from princes highway ©020215

...the note rolls off his tongue as mr. christian bales gets up to leave the room followed by a scramble of eleven reporters and photographers...

ps. 

the locals' of quaama polite way of telling you how to pronounce the name of their village is to use the phrase

 'it's warmer in quaama'

...on her own she supposes she could play the bamboo flute... but she would rather leave it to the musician to play an instrument for an audience... the year was 1988: she was in kuala lumpur and she wanted to see her father's old clarinet again that he used to practise on during rainy days back in the old hometown; he used to be in an eight-piece band as a hobby but he played the cello that he plucked like a small double-bass...she had her youngest brother to thank for helping her hunt the clarinet all over the big insomniac city and they tracked it down to someone's terrace house in petaling jaya...it was on top of the fridge gathering dust and the dude said he used it as a blunt tool to threaten the cat with when it got naughty...

she brought it back to australia, got an instrument repairer in sydney to look at it and who did a great job of lovingly restoring the clarinet...she handed it to her son and he had regular clarinet lessons in canberra...now the boy is a grown-up in sydney where he has picked up ukulele-playing for relaxation like most everybody... and the clarinet is with her down at the coast...

(boosey & hawkes 'regent' made in england serial no.159385 ©210315)

..rivin' easy ruvin' flea

...that busker from beijing did wonders to highlight saturday afternoons down at the wharf but tathra didn’t quite know what to make of ‘highway to hell’ in cantonese…

tathra historic wharf ©210315

...that's handy

tourist cletus monkskirt cannot read, finds himself in the low street of cobargo, a small historic village halfway between bega and narooma on the princes highway, and dying for a pee...so he was immensely relieved to come across this unmistakable graphic of ol' john thomas... he's tempted but too prudish to go see what the ladies signage would look like...

                                                                                cobargo ©080514

...'bigger than bermagui'

is how I'd describe eden, situated in the far south of the new south wales south coast...

green cape, eden ©190315

eden was always a place I told myself I would one day like to go to wherever it may be...perhaps the name 'eden' I've heard as far back as I can remember: garden of eden, east of eden (1955 movie starring james dean), return to eden (1983 tv series), barbara eden (I dream of jeannie)... 

yesterday I arrived for the first time in eden on my motorbike, the furthest south I'd ever been to on earth... it even has a caravan park called 'the garden of eden'...that probably was where the story from a while back happened about a guy adam I think was his name, and he and his girlfriend got kicked out for stealing an apple...according to some report, they told the cop that an eastern brown snake, the second most dangerous snake in australia, implored them to shoplift the fruit...either they must had been smoking some funny ciggies, or that was just a local yarn which I just made up after smoking a funny ciggie...

the lightstation at green cape, eden ©190315

...the other side of eden...

to reach this one of two lighthouses in the area (the other 30km away, the ben boyd tower, a square structure which is much older and isn't in use and in the olden days they used to burn wood at the top and which I didn't get to riding yesterday) took some rough riding and a bit of mental beating: 

18km south of the coastal town of eden there's a left turn-off from the princes highway...5km along the sealed road towards the woodchip mill and the old whaling station, you come to a right turn-off into a dirt road with a sign that says 21km to the green cape lighthouse...2km on that rough track there's another sign that says 'road not suitable for caravans'...now if you're pulling one, that would be a bit of a problem to turn around at that late stage...halfway down, there's yet another sign that says '$7 park fee payable if you come by car or motorcycle and $12 if you are driving a small bus or a CARAVAN'...if you have a change of mind by that time, you would have driven 30km just to see no-more old forest with more signs that say 'last logged 1974'...

...in reply to a post by a dog owner who feels sorry for those who do not have dogs

it's always the neighbours' dogs that are the shit ones...like last night around eleven...it was nice and quiet and peaceful...the minute I stepped into the backyard, the little dog three doors down started barking supported by another barking mutt four doors down...and the frigging chorus continued on for an hour even though I was already indoors! wtf! ...so please carry on sharing which diet to bring out the best smelling farts in dogs but don't feel sorry for us for not having dogs...just be sure that you dog owners consider neighbours' peace before they turn into "neighbours-from-hell"

jaffa, the kelpie-cross whom I got to know, whom I miss...

...the new woolies in bermagui isn't open yet, not until easter anyway... amidst protestations from the locals and businesses, the supermarket quietly takes shape; even the construction workers who play pool with you are ill at ease to talk about their involvement in the build... today I went to narooma woolies to shop and the checkout lady said that the store in bermi is smaller but more modern... I don't know what she meant by that but I guess it will have self-scanning stations horray...

in that narooma woolies today, I noticed these bottles of chutney that screamed rudely at me: "MRS H HAS BALLS!"

...ships out of a desert

...camels are nice, loveable animals, they said...there are quite a few people around here at the south coast of new south wales (check out 'rural surreal #23' below) who have camels in their backyards and that I should go and get to know and like the animals better, they said... I don't think so, I said... well, I found this attempt at selfie on the net and it plainly looks quite painful really...

www.runt-of-the-web.com

... ... bbuaaaawhhk!! ...#@%!! (update and personal)

...I normally keep politics out of these pages...but when guinness is involved, it's personal:

tuesday the 17th's subheadings said: "Ireland Prime Minister has taken offence to a St Patrick's Day video message from Prime Minister Tony Abbott."...so what's new?...the english never likes the irish anyway...I should know: been drinking guinness for decades and fucking hard to find it served in pubs except in irish pubs all the way from london to here...suddenly all this week every pub banks in on the anniversary of the death of st patrick and this 'leader' whom I didn't vote for, insulted a whole great tradition in an instance...his ancestors had been offending against my old country for yonks...and now he is shaming my new one...charming, but lets put our enmity aside for today and have a coupla quiet pints, cheers...

hic!..........hic!

...worst logo for fresh?

I loved comics and cartoons like beano and dandy, tom & jerry, mad magazines, top cat, ...and I distinctly remember the ubiquitous fish bones strewn among flies around dustbins in the back alleys... 

nowadays, I walk along the shops facing the fresh ocean breeze in bermagui and am met with this little anomaly...

   (bermagui ©270215)

...All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand --

"A Dream Within A Dream" (1850) by Edgar Allan Poe

tuross head ©260714

...autumn creeps in like a stealthy ninja...

tuross head, water-apped ©150315

...lookin' cool in bodalla

one sunny afternoon last couple of weeks, I thought I'd ride my motorbike and go to a place I've never been to before but have heard about in casual conversations... and I ended up at 3pm in wyndham, nestled among the green rolling hills just south of bega... there was the pub and across, a post office that is also the general store... walked into the pub to look for something to eat... I was greeted by the bar staff who happened to be the wonderful owner and she made me this scrumptious lunch...awesome fish & chips ever + salad from her own garden... after, she walked me through the history of the pub, how it was named after the poet robbie burns, and that she herself was originally from warwickshire in england... now, that's a true spirit of someone in the hospitality industry looking after a customer... I'll be baak...

wyndham pub...the robbie burns ©020315

©kingfisherCoastalSweeps

...coastal austral #121

tuross head  ©171114

...their month-old suspicion was allayed as mavis prodded maud's shoulder just as evette bloomington sailed in to the baker street party attached to the arm of a debonair boyfriend...

...rural ripples #120

brogo dam ©131114

'hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle,
the cow jumped over the moon...
the little dog laughed to see such fun
and the dish ran away with the spoon!'

… probably one the weirdest nursery rhymes… no wonder no one wanted to admit writing it… but then the author should feel proud of her/his creation because it is now used as a slang term for 'a frontal assault', was featured in j.r.r. tolkien’s ‘lord of the rings’, the black sabbath song ‘supernaut’ from vol. 4 mentions it, a reggae song by sylford walker features it, and from my own observation the illustration appeared as a backdrop when dennis hopper was offered a cup of coffee by luana anders in the 1961 cult movie 'night tide', et al. ...

(a cobargo shopfront right on the princes highway about halfway between bega & narooma, pic taken on ©250214 water-apped)

...coastal textural #119

jellat jellat, about halfway between bega and tathra ©081114

...'to kill two birds with one stone' is plainly not nice; it's outdated, sending kids the negative message, almost impossible to do, and you disrespect the law if you set out to try the feat on some birdies that most likely may happen to be of a protected species... why not be creative when the occasion to use the expression arises and make up your own...like I'll use 'to sing to two frogs with one note'... 

'to kill a mockingbird': now that's another thing sticking in my craw on this beautiful summer's night...

...rural double #118

princes highway, quaama ©131114

I put thumb and finger together and phweeeted...but it went above tuross head; he didn't hear me in the buzz of the crowded stadium...

...rural portal #117

by the roadside on the way to the brogo dam ©131114