Taree 2013

The trip to Taree is about 350 km and if you get away from Sydney quickly it's a pretty easy trip up the freeway to Newcastle & then back on the upgraded Pacific Highway - which is a disgraceful excuse for a road except where upgraded, BTW - for the final stages. It's wet country, lots of rivers and bush which probably merit further exploration, but it's also motorboat country, which makes the waterways a lot less appealing. It's also school-holiday territory; myriads of cheap motels, caravan parks and truly appalling food. Our motel was fine, if a little 2-star, and the host was really genuinely warm.

I discovered a "panorama" function on the camera, which solves the wide-angle problem nicely; this is the bank of the Manning River, with the marquees of the better-organised clubs set up along the bank. The gap between the white and orange tents is the allocated space for us - we weren't quite on top of the organisation and logistics department.

Liz was paddling for a combined Penrith/Sandy Point team; pretty much the only Sydney teams there. Dragon boating is, somewhat bizarrely, Australia's fastest growing sport (off a very small base, I guess) and it's startling how many rural areas have one or two (it seems to be a very political sport, there's hardly a club that wasn't born out a split with another club) crews. Macleay River ended up winning all three divisions (Open, Womens & Mixed),  defeating one of two Newcastle clubs in each of the finals. I've

never heard of the Macleay River! They paddle, I'm informed, in the "Russian style", that is, low rate (around 60 strokes a minute) with a lot of power. Hunter Dragons use an "Asian style", around 80+ strokes a minute.

Liz' boat did pretty well, considering they could only put 16 paddlers into 20 seats, plus they had 3 paddlers at their first regatta. They improved each race, and they beat their own targets. If a couple of races had been 20 metres longer they would have finished higher, but they didn't quite manage to tie their finishing sprints.

Note the nice parallel lines of the leading two paddlers.

Saturday night we had the regatta dinner at the local club; possibly the worst food I've paid for in a long long time, although the steak wasn't completely abominable. Still, next time we're there we might try the Indian food. I did hear, once I got back to Sydney, that there's a wood-fired pizza place about 5km out of town (trying to avoid the health department) which is very good, but it's not easy to believe. Still, the people were pleasant, and food isn't everything, despite Masterchef and various bake-off-based reality TV shows.

We got away at about 12:30 Sunday - the regatta was superbly run - and were back in Sydney around 5, so another pretty good trip. The right glute was a bit sore from all that driving; sadly, my physio says that isn't going to go away, but it's a lot better now than it was before the treatment, plus I can run at pretty much full pace now. Last week I managed three consecutive runs; this week I'll try for four. Anyway, Hawkesbury's coming! And sailing will be back on the agenda soon, if this weather keeps up.