Friday April 25, 2014

I was not really sure why we choose to stay in a motel last night, but thank goodness we did.

We were woken at 3:30 am by hail stones bouncing on the roof of the motel and the cars outside of our door.  Ralf opened the door and hail stones the size of a baseball (cricket ball) came bouncing into the room.  It was a storm that I haven’t seen in years, thunder, lightening and hail stones, it lasted for over half an hour.

Out of the cars in the car park 3 out of the 4 were damaged by the hail.  Most of them had damage to the windshields and/or dents to the roofs of the car.  If we had stayed in the tent, it would have been wrecked.  Maybe all yesterdays issues happened for a reason – if we hadn\’t arrived late in Bulahdelah at the time we did, we would have been in our tent through this storm.

At 5:30am the alarm went of and Ralf and I went over to the cenotaph.  The roads were covered in tree debris and I was surprised to see quite a crowd waiting for the service.  It was a very simple service to commemorate the ANZAC’s landing in Gallipoli.

As the service started it was dark and by the time it finished it was light.  The service was very moving and sincere. The Town’s population is approximately 900 people there were over 150 people at the cenotaph from a babe in arms to the veterans of the second world war.

The Pledge was read by the RSL President:

“To make peace the noble cause for which our comrades dies, we dedicate ourselves.  We believe that war between members of the human race is an evil thing.  We believe that all Nations should work together to secure a better and nobler life for all the world, to try and act on these beliefs”.

Ralf took these two photos in Upper Hutt in New Zealand.  I thought the sentiment and the statue was awesome.  We Will Remember Them.

This is the explanation of the statue.  I hope you can read it.

Friday April 25, 2014

Bulahdelah to Taree

After the service we went back to the room and prepared to leave.  Once again the heavens opened and the forecast for the day was rain and thunderstorms – a severe weather warning was issued for the Hunter area for the day.  We had to decide whether to stay or go, our neighbour in the room next door offered us a lift to Taree.  If we stayed we would have to spend another night in the motel, if we left we would have to spend a night in a motel.  After a discussion and check on the map to see if we would miss anything spectacular on the way we choose to take the lift.

We are now in Taree waiting for the rain to go away and we will carry on to Port MacQuarrie tomorrow.

The Blog is up to date 🙂