Our Caravan Travels on the Big Island 2012: "Ned's Corner"

Today we had a thick frost, heavy fog but eventually a beautiful sunny day, just right for a drive so Lucille and I went with Geoff and Anne Lees, who have been here with us for several days and headed off to Cecil Plains, Millmerran, Pittsworth and back to Jondaryan, drove for many miles through the flat farming land of the Darling Downs, have not seen so much cotton before in my life, it was everywhere.

The main destination of our drive was to "Ned's Corner", this place is owned by Ned Winter and we got to know him here at Jondaryan where he has been a volunteer worker and entertainer since the early 80's, (I have repaired a couple of his whips, one a 22 foot bullock whip) his property, "Ned's Corner" is a 1700acre farm that he and his wife developed over many years into a tourist business centred around camping on the property and camp oven cooking, especially damper and stew cooking, the "cookhouse" is a large bough shed that will accommodate large bus groups and they are fed and entertained by Ned and his helpers, it is full of Australiana "stuff", photos and Ned's Poems, they have now closed the bus tours and plan to sell the property and retire next year.
Geoff asked Ned if he had any stock on the property, he thought for a moment and replied, "well you must have seen the couple hundred Roo's as you drove in", which we did, they were everywhere, "oh and we have two camels out there somewhere" he said,; the roos are here because he has built protective fences to preserve the wildlife and they have a free run of the place, the camels are here to eat the prickly pear and apparently they do an excellent job of it.
Anyway Ned cooked us a very nice damper for lunch and we washed it down with billy tea and spent a few hours listening to his stories(of which he has many), poems, singing and guitar playing, he really is a character. He is also the instigator and first organiser of the Great Australian Camp Oven Cooking Competition that is held very year at Millmerran, the first year he had three teams and a handful of spectators, last year they have over 7,000 spectators and many of them camped on and around the showgrounds for the festival.

We are all ok except for Lucille who managed to slip over while walking down a ramp from the verandah of the dining room, quite a few sore bits and and a skun arm, not happy...see photo.

Won't be long now before we head for the N.T. to catch up with Stuart and Alex, at this stage plan to leave here on the 25th July, spend a few weeks there then back here at the end of August to be here for the Jackie Howe Golden Shears festival, it is expected to be a huge event, for those that are like me and not into sheep, Jackie Howe was a famous hand shearer who held shearing records for many years and he is also famous for inventing the "Bluey" singlet, he told his mum that the sleeves of his flannel was to hot and could she cut them out, she did and the idea caught on.