Hinze Dam recon

[deadpool]

Took the girlfriend to Hinze Dam on the weekend.. just to "show her around". She didn't understand why we were going at about 4pm though. I tried to explain and all she did was laugh, but I digress.

We went for a drive there.. had a look at the dam. The I thought to take the scenic route & go down Nerang Murwillumbah Rd. Stopped at the side of the road where we could pull over.. call of nature + hopefully spot something. Walked in about 50m down a track... did my thing, and had a quick look about. Found a branch snapped off on a tree about 6ft up i'd say.. i'm 5"7.. tried to take some pictures on my phone but the quality was way too grainy and not worth posting. On the way back to the car I noticed a marker.. well, I think it was one.. about 4 sticks in a triangular formation near the side of the track. Didn't see or hear any sign of the big guy himself.. but saw markings. But I did feel like I was being watched. The girlfriend got creeped out. She kept saying "is someone watching us?".

All I could do was smile.

So, i'm going to have to go back there in the next week - check it out for myself properly.

[Ella]

Yeah, Alex, I'm very familiar with that feeling of being watched. I've experienced that more than once in both Oklahoma and Texas. There is no way to describe it, and it didn't bother me because I knew what was watching me. But on that same friend's property in Oklahoma, she told me that a good number of her visitors get "creeped out" and want to leave because of the (to them) disturbing, uncomfortable feeling. I only wished the BF would emerge from the egg-sucking woods and show themselves, but of course they're not in the habit of doing that.....oh well.

[Shazzoir]

Hey Alex,

I have rellies living (at least one of them is still alive and living there) in Gilston, just behind Hinze Dam, they used to own hundreds of hectares of land, moved there in the 1800's. When I was a kid in the 70's, we used to visit Aunty Rena, as their property was the largest chunk of that parcel of land left in the family, the rest having been split up and sold over the generations. Most of it was large blocks of 10 acres or so, but Rena's place was still a functioning dairy, and she, her husband and her two sons ran it right up until Rena's husband died in the late 80's.

When we would visit, Rena loved telling us stories about her childhood growing up on that largely pristine chunk of bush. As you all say, I wish I knew enough about things to write down what she said, but I was only a youngster and only remember a tiny bit of her stories. She told us her father used to catch or trap or shoot anything for the table, as life was hard back then. Lorikeets were welcome and were shot for "Greenie Pie" and back then before they were protected, her father used to trap platypus which lived in the creeks running through the property and sell the skins. Bush foods were an every day diet. I remember her telling us about the time her father came home from the dairy, told Rena to stay inside, and took their eldest son out to the back paddocks, both of them armed with their rifles/guns and came back soaking wet and scared out of their wits, saying only that something chased them through the creek. I can't remember too much else, but remember Rena saying she thought it was a hobo living rough in the bush somewhere.

Shazzoir

[Ella]

Hey Shazz, this is just incredible--though I did have to Google "hectare" (about 100 acres) and "lorikeet" (a beautiful, multicolored Australian parrot). Your aunt Rena is truly a repository of your country's history, and how I wish I could have the privilege of meeting her myself. My great-grandmother and her sister, and my grandmother, all of course deceased, were her East Texas counterparts.

To this day, some rural poor people in southeast Texas kill and eat possums, coons, and river turtles. Many country people kill and eat feral hogs and make sausage out of the pork. And of course, during deer season, best to stay out of the woods!