On my recent road trip to Canberra I managed to locate a park where a mate and I visited 25 years ago. I had ‘looked’ for it on my previous road trip to Sydney last year, but obviously didn’t look very well as I drove straight past it. We spent a couple of hours there 25 years ago and I still have a large granite slab that I collected from there. I was very excited to find it again and spent an hour walking around, only this time I had a camera and took some pics. It is just south of Glen Innes in the high plains country of the ‘Granite Belt’, and it is beautiful country around there. It is 1100m above sea level around here and gets nice and cold in winter.

The park has a good variety of trees including Pines, Cedars, Alders, Beech, English Elm, Hawthorn, Poplars and Cypress mingled with some native species as well. A feature of this area is also the rocks that appear to have been placed in a giants playground. There were more balancing on each other, but there is evidence that some of these have fallen over the years as the cold has split them apart. Most of the pines have grown from seeds deposited in the cracks and have blown the rocks to bits over the years also.

This place gave me loads of inspiration all those years ago and was a pure joy to wander through these grounds again

Hello Viewers

I hope everybody had a great Christmas / New Year period with family and friends.

My apologies for being so quiet on the posts, but I have had the pleasure of 3 weeks off this year with 17 days camping at the beach. Very relaxing.

I have come home to many overgrown trees that had been condensed under a sprinkler system. A couple of losses to small trees that missed enough water, but otherwise happy how they fared through the heat. I have plenty of work to do and will post updates as I get into it.

It has already been a big start to the year for me as I have had confirmation that I have been selected as a demonstrator at the World Bonsai Friendship Federation’s World Bonsai Convention in China in September. I am very excited at this opportunity as it has been a goal of mine for many years. One other from Australia and one from New Zealand will make up our 3 person team representing the Australia / New Zealand region of the WBFF. There will be over 30 of us from around the globe in one massive simultaneous demonstration event. They were to be judged with Gold, Silver and Participation Certificates on offer, but I am not sure if this is still happening.

I have also just applied for what I would call my career goal job, and dream job, of Curator of the National Bonsai and Penjing Collection of Australia, opening in Canberra in February. I feel I have been working towards a position like this for nearly 30 years and would relish the opportunity to gain an interview for this position. Any positive thoughts you can put out there for me would be greatly appreciated.  🙂              The position starts at the end of January so I will know soon enough.

I will be a bit distracted untill things sort themselves out, but will have to get pruning and feeding again, so I will be updating some posts soon.

Update 25 January.

Due to the work needing to be done for the opening on the 2nd Feb, they will not be viewing applications till after the 4 Feb. Only a slight delay but just a bit more waiting. I am going down for the opening anyway to check out my new location  😉

The view from under the gazebo. It’s so quiet here lots of us put gazebos on the beach and leave them there. Ours was up for 2 weeks

Our campsite set up. Boys in the tents. Us in the camper bed. Parties under the tarp

View of the island from the base of the headland

View from the top of the headland looking back toward civilisation

We even get to enjoy sunset over the river behind us