Franklin News and Views

Books: Rich land, Wasteland : How coal is killing Australia by Sharyn Munro For nearly a year Sharyn Munro travelled through rural Australia, visiting the communities i...

Bushwalks: Mount Olympus : 10-12 November 2012 Mid October was the original time planned for a walk to Mount Olympus, but the weather wasn’t nice enough so it was put...

Rich land, Wasteland by Sharyn Munro My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews

Bushwalks: White Timber Mountain : Sunday 14 October 2012 This was the second attempt on this peak; the first being cancelled a couple of weeks back due to snow cover.  My o...

Geocaching: Freycinet Bushwalk : 3 – 5 October 2012 As we were going on a bushwalk to Freycinet Peninsula the potential geocache finds in the area were checked and several ...

Bushwalks: Bluff River Gorge : Thursday 12 July 2012 Gradually the cloudy sky broke up and there was plenty of sun for this bushwalk taking us past the three caches in t...

Photo album from a walk to Bluff River Gorge

Geocaching: Beside New Town Creek : Wednesday 4 July 2012 We had two reasons for walking up beside New Town Creek today; one was to deposit three moveable caches we had recent...

Geocaching: Off to the Thumbs : Wednesday 27 June 2012 Well the weather was just ideal for a bushwalk to the Three Thumbs and to collect a few geocaches during the trip. Ho...

Geocaching: Checking on the Frog : Thursday 28 June 2012 A message came through that Kirby the Frog could not be found so we planned a walk to check this out. Before going,...

Future Bushwalks: Three Thumbs : Wednesday 27 June 2012 This is walk we have done regularly every few years in the last couple of decades.  It is fairly straight forward, e...

Geocaching: Myrtle Forest : 20 June 2012 A bushwalk to the top of Collins Cap was in the plan for the day, with a couple of caches to hopefully be the bonus. On the wa...

Geocaching: Near the Southern Outlet : Friday 22 June 2012 It was a nice sunny, if quite cold day, and we decided to go for a walk in the suburb of Dynnyrne and collect a geocach...

  I have an interest in plants but I was only able to watch about 10-15 minutes of How To Grow A Planet but soon got fed up with watching some bloke  dominating the screen and switched it off when we just about zoomed in the flora in his nose.   There was some nice scenery but thrown in at times, but gee wiz what a useless program. No wonder I rarely look at TV. I did get a laugh at Shaun Micallef's MAD AS HELL though.

Geocaching: Binalong in the wet and dry : On a trip to Binalong Bay our hope of accumulating the maximum planned caches was thwarted by a day of almost nonstop rain, but fortunately ...

Geocaching: Tinderbox Hills : This was day when we were looking after our granddaughter, so it was decided to go for a walk on the TinderBox Hills Track and collect a fe...

Geocaching: Waterworks Stroll : 1 June 2012 For a few weeks we have been meaning to head back to the Ridgeway Park and collect a cache out on the eastern side. There was a...

Bushwalks: Trestle Mountain : Mountain River Route Wednesday 16 May 2012 Perhaps the only advantage of going to Trestle Mountain via the Mountain River track is the f...

Friends of Mt Field: Old Pack, Wombat Moor and Platypus Tarn Tracks Mai... : Saturday  19 May 2012 As there was a good turnout for the day, we split into two groups. One lot of 4 went off to complete the drainage on...

Geocaching: Tasman Duo : 9 and 10 May 2012 It was hoped to be Tasman Trio as the story below will reveal . Hauy We camped overnight at Fortescue Bay and plann...

Future Bushwalks: Trestle Mountain : From Mountain River Wednesday 16th May 2012 Initially the track up from Mountain River is not unduly steep and has several fairly level se...

Geocaching: Thark Ridge : Sunday 6 May Peter had been preoccupied trying to work out some of Barad Bunch’s puzzle geocache, with plenty of help from the owner being ...

Geocaching: Frogs and Water : We knew that " Swimming Hole " was a cache not far from home and finally decided to seek it. Earlier in the week we had picked up " Spot the...

Geocaching: A search for Two Views a Multicache :   We were going to the Plants of Tasmania nursery at Ridgeway and had time to search for " Two Views ", a multicache. We assumed the first ...

Geocaching: Spiral of Archimedes Revisited : Well after our failure to locate this one earlier in the week and then suspecting we really had spotted it, we made a quick return today. A...

Geocaching: A Circuit : Today we left the car in Davey Street and walked through some streets to have a look at the different houses in the area, ranging from lar...

Books: King Brown Country by Russell Skelton : The Betrayal of Papunya   Background Walkley award-winning journalist Russell Skelton presents a devastatingly revealing portrait of Papu...

Bushwalks: Mount Alexandra : Wed 28 – Fri 30 March 2012 As always the climb up 650 metres to Moonlight Flat is hard work . There is also the perception that you have r...

Click image to view album

Bushwalks: Mount Patrick : Tuesday 13 March 2012 Track is most uninspiring and you are on it for some  3.6 k and  60 minutes twice.  Since last visit there the potho...

The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage My rating: 4 of 5 stars This was an interesting book that demonstrated pretty convincing evidence that a lot of Australian bushland was quite open before white settlement. A great number of references to the park like land that the early white people documented along with the numerous fires that the aborigines lit is in the book. In fact this theme is a common thread through the book, partly because Bill Gammage wanted to provide a strong case for his assessment what the land was like as some academics do not want to believe that aborigines were capable of sophisticated land management. That aborigines had a close connection to the land is beyond dispute, but the evidence in this book was enough to convince me that they believed that looking after the land was of the utmost importance, and that they managed it by taking into account the type of country and the flora and other conditions present. V...

Books: The Biggest Estate on Earth : The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia Synopsis Across Australia, early Europeans commented again and again that the l...

Bushwalks: South Wellington Plateau : Saturday 17 March 2012 Three geocaches were on the agenda for this bushwalk. From Big Bend we walked in a fairly direct line to join with ...

Bushwalks: Mount Bobs and The Boomerang : 7–9 March 2012 So far this year I have not had one day on a walk where the sky was bright blue and cloud free all day, and the walk to Mou...

Bushwalks: Lake Shelf : 21 – 23 February 2012 The track has got a bit worse for wear since the last visit, although some bits had not changed that much it did seem...

Friends of Mt Field: Wombat Moor Woodland Mosaic Track : Saturday 18 February 2012 The 270 metre track to the Wombat Moor Woodland Mosaic is usually quite wet and parts are muddy. To help ov...

Music: Songs & Pictures by Beccy Cole : It seems that Beccy Cole has at last made an album that leaves out the raucous songs that to me are quite unappealing. Maybe her fans like...

The King's Speech by Mark Logue My rating: 3 of 5 stars After seeing the film I thought it would be interesting to read about Lionel Logue. The book is not the story of the film, but a biography on his life, although of course it covers the episodes that are the film. It is quite an easy book to read and I did not find it became tedious at all. It is just about the right length for such a book View all my reviews

Into the Unknown - The Tormented Life and Expeditions of by John Bailey My rating: 4 of 5 stars This book gives a good insight into the character of Ludwig Leichhardt and his eventual explorations in Australia. It is a well written and informative book and easy to read. In his formative years Ludwig Leichhardt decided he would like to explore and find new areas, but he spent this time studying range of subjects, including medicine. However he did not sit for exams and although very knowledgeable, never gained formal qualifications. When first coming to Australia Leichhardt wandered about the bush, marvelling at a land so different from Europe. He would study the plants, animals and geology of areas and make copious notes. It is from his notes and diaries that John Bailey has tapped into, to tell the story. The expedition Leichhardt arranged to cross from Brisbane to Port Essington, on the Northern Territory coast not that far from the current Darwin, took an great deal l...