The Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory

April 10, 2021April 7, 2021 / wordynerdbird / 1 Comment

Junee is located in the Riverina of New South Wales, about 350km southwest of Sydney. It is a nice looking town with some well-restored old buildings, surrounded by the sorts of landscapes that I grew up thinking were iconically Australian: low hills, brown grass paddocks dotted with sheep and trees, and fields of wheat and other crops.

Situated in a beautifully restored old building which used to be the town’s flour mill, The Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory was the drawcard that brought us to town while we were visiting family in Griffith, about 2 hours’ drive further south.

We enjoyed a delicious lunch in the outdoor area under the shade of Virginia creeper supported by old wooden beams. The menu may not be extensive, but the food was absolutely delicious.

Visitors can stroll through the building and watch the different kinds of chocolates and sweet treats being made through large viewing windows.

The factory’s chocolate shop offers a multitude of organic sweet treats: plain chocolate, regular or raspberry licorices in plain or chocolate coated varieties, rocky road, freckles, chocolate coated pretzels, varieties of chocolate with different fruit or nuts in them, just to name a few. The hardest part is deciding what you want to take home, and how much work you’ll have to do to make up for it later on.

In addition to all the sweet things, there are all sorts of produce on offer: pickles, sauces, balsamic vinegar, jams and chutneys, honey and olive oil – all locally produced.

*It honestly doesn’t get much more Aussie than this.*

Out of responsibility to the folk who read my blog, we bought some chocolate to taste-test, and we are not sorry.

The chocolate is smooth, creamy and delicious. That freckle I just bit into for the sake of the photo is the perfect blend of crunchy and smooth. The rate at which my husband ate his chocolate covered raspberry licorice bullets was definitely indicative of superior quality and taste. The chocolate-coated pretzels I bought were as good as the ones I had in Amish country in Pennsylvania, and that’s really saying something! Consequently, they did not last long enough to have their photo taken. It was only a small packet, after all.

In retrospect, it’s probably a good thing that the Junee Chocolate and Licorice Factory is a ten hour drive from home.

The Junee Licorice and Chocolate Factory
#chocolate #organic #travel
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Jerilderie: A Little Town With Big History

April 8, 2021April 7, 2021 / wordynerdbird / 1 Comment

Jerilderie is a small country town situated on Billabong Creek in the southern Riverina area of New South Wales. The Newell Highway runs right through the town, so it is very easy to find.

Jerilderie has a lovely lake and park on the banks of Billabong Creek. This park is also the site of the town’s war memorial to local soldiers who fought in the Boer War both World Wars.

It’s a small town with a big history, courtesy of Australian bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang. It was an even smaller town then than it is now, but it had one thing that was most attractive to Ned Kelly: a printing press.

Although the Kelly gang usually operated in northern Victoria, it was in Jerilderie where Ned and his gang robbed the bank, took control of the local post and telegraph office, bailed up the postmaster and had telegraph wires cut and the poles cut down to prevent news of his visit to the town being communicated until after the fact.

*The post and telegraph office held up by Ned Kelly.*

It was in Jerilderie that Ned Kelly entrusted his 75 000 word manifesto known as The Jerilderie Letter to the postmaster, who promised to pass the papers on to the newspaper editor. This document explained and defended Kelly’s motives and actions, and also proposed a republic of north-eastern Victoria. The postmaster did not pass on the papers— in fact, the originals were lost for 90 years, and a copy of the letter was not printed until fifty years after Kelly’s death.

Visitors to Jerilderie can see the buildings visited by Kelly and his gang, and follow a trail of story boards that detail the events of the gang’s exploits in town. There is also a small museum attached to the Murrumbidgee Shire offices, which has displays of artefacts including Kelly’s Colt Carbine revolver and replicas of the iconic armour worn by the gang.

Jerilderie is a great place to visit. The locals are friendly and welcoming, and visitors can find excellent food at both the local bakery and the pub. The old-fashioned candy store is also worth visiting for those with a sweet tooth.

Jerilderie.
#History #Australia #NewSouthWales
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Altina Wildlife Park, Darlington Point, NSW.

April 7, 2021April 7, 2021 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

Altina Wildlife Park is one of the hidden gems of New South Wales’ Riverina district. Situated just over 30km from Griffith and just under 100kn from Jerilderie, Altina is on the Sturt Highway near Darlington Point.

Altina has a great range of small and large animals, and offers a positive and enjoyable opportunities to see and learn about them.

Visitors are invited to walk through the small animal and reptile sections of the park at their leisure, and are then taken through the large animal part of the park on a wagon behind one of the park’s beautiful Clydesdale horses.

There is a great range of animals from all over the world to see, and the tours are informative and interesting. The tours are presented by the zookeepers, who are knowledgeable about all the animals both in a general sense and in terms of being personally involved in the care, training and feeding of the animals.

The enclosures are large enough for the animals to have sufficient room to roam, and care is taken to provide, is keen to preserve and breed animals that may be endangered in the wild. The park has a philosophy of interfering with the animals as little as possible, so the animals are trained to do certain things so that the keepers can check their health without going into their enclosures or sedating the animals any more than is absolutely necessary.

*At the fence of the enclosure, the health of the white lionesses is checked easily: a grass seed or stone can be removed from a paw and their teeth can be checked without difficulty or danger.*

I have visited Altina twice when visiting family in Griffith, and have thoroughly enjoyed both experiences.

Altina Wildlife Park
#zoo #photography
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All images in this post are my own.

Point Danger, Victoria.

January 15, 2018 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

2018-01-12 19.51.36 Danger Point

Point Danger is on a promontory just south of Portland, Victoria.

2018-01-12 19.58.36 Danger Point

Just off the coast is an island that hosts a gannet rookery. It’s not accessible to the public, but you can go down to the coastline and watch them flying just beyond the fence.

2018-01-12 20.02.18 Danger Point

The shore itself is fenced off so that the birds remain undisturbed by visitors. There are better places from which to take photos of the birds and the island, but I wasn’t able to access them on this visit because of mobility issues: I’m on crutches!

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You can also turn off the road to the rookery to visit Crumpets Beach. This is a beautiful spot that lies almost at the end of a fairly rugged track that you would only attempt in a 4-wheel-drive or on foot.

2018-01-12 20.12.50 Crumpets Beach

Once the track has negotiated some tight bends and bumpy stretches, all the while going fairly steeply downhill, it levels out to run along the beach toward the headland.

2018-01-12 20.17.11 Crumpets Beach

This magnificent scenery all lies within fifteen minutes’ drive of Portland, on the south-west coast of Victoria, Australia, which is actually one of the oldest cities in the state. It has some lovely old buildings, a very active deep-harbour international sea port, and is very popular with fishermen and holidaymakers.

Halls Gap, The Grampians.

March 9, 2017 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

The locals are very friendly when there’s food about!

One of many rugged escarpments.

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Overlooking Lake Wartook from the road from Halls Gap to Mackenzie Falls.

Trees regenerating after devastating bushfires.

Breathtaking scenery in every direction.

Mt Emu Creek, Ecklin.

October 3, 2016 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

People often think of Australia as hot, dry and dusty. They’re not altogether wrong, but it’s not always like that.

A line from one of my favourite Australian poems talks of Australia as a land “of droughts and flooding rains”.
We’ve certainly had those flooding rains lately.

Mt Emu Creek usually meanders quite sedately through farmland in western Victoria where I live, and joins up with the Hopkins River north of Warrnambool.
Recently though, it turned the farmland into a floodplain and created some new, beautiful imagery of its own.

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Mt Leura and Mt Sugarloaf, Camperdown.

October 3, 2016 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

I don’t know about you, but I love a stormy sky and the different qualities it brings to the landscape.

Mt Leura is relatively small for a ‘mountain’, but it does afford a spectacular view of the “lakes and craters” landscape of this dormant volcanic region.

Overlooking Camperdown.

Looking north – the rain is coming!

Looking northeast.

Looking east, over Lake Corangamite toward Colac.

Mt Sugarloaf – a perfectly conical formation nestled beside Mt Leura.

RED ROCK LOOKOUT, ALVIE.

April 13, 2015 / wordynerdbird / 2 Comments

Red Rock is a dormant volcano near Alvie in western Victoria which offers spectacular views of lakes, craters and dramatic landforms that are the result of volcanic action over thousands of years. It is believed to be a younger volcano than others nearby such as Tower Hill near Warrnambool, Lake Purrumbete near Camperdown, and Mt Elephant at Derrinallum. The views from the lookout are breathtaking: craters, lakes, hills and folds that rise dramatically out of the earth, and a patchwork of farms that thrive on the rich volcanic soil.It’s no wonder they call this “Lakes and Craters Country”.

On Coragulac Hill near the peak of Red Rock, is the War Memorial for Alvie and Dreeite servicemen who fought “for God, King and Country” as stated on the stone memorial. As I stood and read the names, I was very aware of the fact that it was exactly 100 years ago that some of these men were fighting and dying for our freedom. I spent two minutes in silence and finished with “Lest We Forget”. It just seemed like the right thing to do.

HOPKINS FALLS, VICTORIA.

April 12, 2015 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

In the early Autumn, the Hopkins River meanders lazily through the beautiful farmlands of western Victoria, gurgling and spilling gently over these rocks and falls near Cudgee, just north of Warrnambool. The water level is so low that some parts of the stream are cut off, forming rock pools in the river bed above the falls. Cows graze along the banks and drink from the cool, fresh stream.
When the river is high and fast, the falls are turbulent and powerful, and the stream below is far too deep and unsafe for cows to graze so close to its banks.

THE ROCK WALLS OF THE STONY RISES.

April 10, 2015 / wordynerdbird / Leave a comment

The Stony Rises are found between Camperdown, Pirron Yallock and Cobden in Victoria’s Western District.
The fields are full of volcanic rock, a testament to the fact that the dormant volcanoes in the area were once far more active than they are now. Ever since settlement, local farmers have used these rocks to create stone walls that divide their farms into paddocks. While some have fallen into disrepair, others are still maintained and used today.