Pam and Jamie's holiday snaps

Everyone comfy on their bean bags? Good. Settle back and relax as we bring you the latest holiday snaps from Garden Amateur's two little garden/art/nature lovers as we tour southern Australia in very early spring. First slide please, projectionist!

What a colourful way to announce to the world that we have left the city and are out in the country. All through our trip we saw huge, far-as-the-eye-can-see fields of canola crops in flower. This is where we first saw them, in Cowra, about 4.5 hours west of Sydney, where our real objective was to see the Japanese gardens there.

We stayed at the Vineyard Motel, which is far enough out of town to make us feel like we were among the paddocks. As well as enjoying its cool misty mornings, Pam and I almost froze to death at night, standing outside looking up at the dazzling Milky Way on a perfectly cloudless, starry sparkly night. It's good for the soul to stare at the Milky Way.

Next morning, straight off to the Cowra Japanese Gardens, which were a couple of weeks short of being in full bloom, but still beautiful to behold with their clipped balls of greenery and tumbling streams.

They don't just plonk seats here and there at Cowra. Each is perfectly placed to take in a wonderful view of the garden, and this one high on the hill has its own little bamboo-posted walkway that feels almost ceremonial.

Taking advantage of a perfect seat placement, en plein air watercolour artist Pammy spent some very productive time capturing the scene. Wherever we travel, she takes a small painting kit with her.

Late September and early October is the peak blossom-filled time to visit the Cowra Japanese Garden, but we've been there at other times of year and it's always a wonderful place to wander for a few hours.

Next stop, Mitta Mitta in Victoria. In the same mountain zone as better-known Beechworth, Mitta Mitta is in a lush valley, from which you can see snow-covered Mount Bogong looming large.

Lucky us! We stayed at this cottage that is part of the Witches Garden (about which I will be doing a separate posting in a few days, as it has a large, gorgeous garden which will be open to visitors in early November). 

This cottage was a city couple's 'escape to the country fantasy' come true: beautiful stream flowing behind it, superb garden, log fires, big country kitchen, total privacy, native birds galore. We could've stayed for weeks.

As well as these rosellas, there were kookaburras cacking their heads off and dazzling king parrots hanging around, knowing that we had been given a big jar of birdseed to keep them happy.

However, we weren't just in Mitta Mitta for fun. Pam was there to teach a watercolour art class organised by her great mate, Marg (left), and the snazzy new Mitta Mitta Community Hall was a perfect venue.

Mitta Mitta has some very dedicated artists, but they weren't so familiar with watercolours, and that's where Pammy showed them the ropes. Here's one of her 5-minute quick landscape demos that she did for them.

That cane chair on the verandah proved to be the perfect spot for Pam to whip out the painting kit one day and enjoy some quality time painting that birch tree and those camellias.

She's only half-way finished at this stage, and I might be biased but I even love what she does with her watercolour palette — she ought to frame that as an abstract work, too.

After Mitta Mitta we headed through Bendigo and Castlemaine to see our dear friends Amanda and Mike in Kyneton, but on the way we stopped off in Bendigo to see the Chinese gardens there. We were the only ones there ... so serene.

If I was ever going to remodel a garden and its outdoor spaces, I think I'd ask a Chinese architect to come and lend a hand. Pammy could do the frescoes.

We stayed in Melbourne a few days, saw more old friends, and on our way out we stopped off at Ballarat. Why is it that houses by the water (actually rowing sheds on Lake Wendouree) seem so perfectly tranquil?

Lots of Aussies would know that Ballarat in not the most direct way home from Melbourne, and that's because we headed way out to western Victoria, where these elegant, gently weeping yellow-flowered gum trees proliferated.

We were venturing out west to ride the "Silo Art Trail" which features a set of six very large silos painted with portraits of local people by street artists. This one above is my favourite, and it's in Brim. 

This one, in Rupanyup, features a local netballer and a footballer. The whole trail of six silos is about a 200km drive, but out there the roads are straight and empty, so each leg of the journey doesn't take long.

It gets so amazingly flat out here, real "big sky country" that at one stage Pammy said "I think I can see the curvature of the Earth on the horizon." For really big skies, you need clouds, of course, so thanks Huey.

This area is so flat and outbacky that it even has several salt lakes. This is Lake Tyrrell, which was still carrying some water from winter rains when we visited, but the summer's heat bakes it white and shimmery. 

From the Wimmera Region and its painted silos, we had many more miles to cover before we made it back to Sydney, but on the way as we crossed the Murray River at Barham, we spotted some river boats sitting on the slowly moving river and fantasised about maybe floating down the Murray some time in the future. Who knows?

As I mentioned earlier in this posting, I'm planning on doing something about the wonderful Witches Garden at Mitta Mitta soon. It's open under the Open Garden Scheme in early November, so if you can somehow manage to be there, do not miss out on the chance to visit Mitta Mitta, see the garden, and maybe even stay a while in the gorgeous country cottage there.

Country comforts

"I love a road trip," said Pammy, as we glided in our car through northern New South Wales on our way to Brisbane. And she's right, we both do like a good road journey together. As regular readers might remember, we staged an epic eight-week holiday in September, October and November 2011, logging up 6000km as we crossed the USA from west to east. 

This time we're much less ambitious, just heading north a mere thousand kilometres or so to see friends, a fabulous art exhibition or two and all the while enjoying a well-earned break after a truly hectic time leading up to the closure of my beloved old magazine, 'Burke's Backyard', whose very last issue hits the newsstands next week.

The one garden-worthy thing we wanted to post about this time, though, is how wonderfully pretty, green and healthy the New South Wales countryside is looking right now. As is our normal policy we steer clear of the main highways wherever we can and take the longer route through smaller towns and quieter backroads, and the small towns of New South Wales are looking so flower-filled, lushly green and delightful right now. Here's a couple of photos – plus one of my trademark 'pan shot with commentary' videos – to show you where we've been.

Lush green pastures everwhere. As every Australian knows,
it doesn't always look this pretty, especially in late summer,
when so often it can be straw coloured and sunburned.

Everywhere the crepe myrtles were in bloom in their usual
array of light, mid and dark pinks, reds and whites. Some
are handsome trees, more often they're smaller shrubs with
distinct trunks. These two were spotted in Gloucester.

Our route north took us up Buckett's Way, then Thunderbolt's
Way, through Stroud, Gloucester, Walcha, Uralla then onto
our overnight stay in Armidale. At the top of Thunderbolt's Way
there's a roadside lookout where we stopped to take this
and other photos and – you've been warned – my pan shot.
So without further ado, 20 seconds of live action, folks.

(By the way, I've been told my pan shot links don't work in the emailed version of my blog, so here's a link to the cinematic masterpiece, if you really want to see it). http://youtu.be/zhVRwNGNOlw

Pam's a volcano fan but it's a tragedy that such an avid
volcano watcher has no active volcanoes to enjoy here in
Australia. Our continent is such a very ancient land that
almost all our volcanoes are well and truly extinct, and all
that's left are granite 'plugs' such as you see here. These are
the solidified cores which lurked deep within what must
have been awesomely angry, big mountains. All that anger,
rock and soil has weathered away over millions of years and
we're left with these thumbs of rock poking up out of the trees.

Our lovely destination last night was Annie's B&B, just on the
outskirts of Armidale. It's set on a property of several acres,
where gum trees, lawns, magpies and cockatoos create a
soothing bushland atmosphere. Had a good night's sleep
here we did, then in the morning the magpies sang...

Our little self-contained cabin had all the mod
cons inside, a nice ornamental Prunus by the
front door, barbecue (which we didn't use)
tables and chairs outside. Though we only
stayed one night it felt like a place we could
have easily spent a lazy week or so.

When Aussies do rustic arbours they head
straight for the railway sleeper section of the
timber yard. Nevertheless a vigorous
climber needs a sturdy frame and it has one
here, and the effect is bound to last for years.

We're in Brisbane now just for a few days. The view outside our serviced apartment is of a giant crane towering above a construction site, with more serviced apartment skyscrapers beyond. I'd rather be in Armidale at Annie's, surrounded by gum trees and magpies if I had the choice, but at least this skyscraper we're in is just one block from the Botanic Gardens, 10 minutes from Southbank and the art galleries we plan to visit, so we're planning to have a lovely few days here, and if we spot anything in the botanic gardens worth sharing with you, rest assured we'll show it to you soon.

USA here we come!

We're off to America! Yippee! Well, not straight away... let me explain. But I need your help!

Pammy and I have long talked about visiting the US one day, going for a long drive in fact. We don't like airports, but we do love music, and some sad events recently have galvanised us into doing it now, rather than waiting any longer. Life is short.

There are a couple of centrepieces to the trip, which could take about eight weeks to complete, maybe more. And I was hoping that some of my readers in the USA and elsewhere might be able to help out with suggestions of good gardens to see along the way.

We haven't figured out our exact itinerary yet, but I think we do know which states we're planning on visiting, so here goes with the rough outline.

First stop Hawaii - Pam loves volcanoes, has never seen one, so we're going to see active volcanoes on the Big Island. As we're not in a hurry, I am sure Hawaii has some superb gardens that would be worth seeing.

Nevada – OK, I admit it, I want to see the world's tackiest city, just for a day, but from there we'll be driving south to the Grand Canyon. I'm much more of a landscape and geography kind of tourist than a big city tourist.

Arizona - heading east from the Canyon...

New Mexico - main stop-off destination is Santa Fe

Texas – this is where the music thing really kicks in. We want to go to Lubbock for starters, not only because Buddy Holly was born there, but so too were our kind of musicians, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Butch Hancock and Joe Ely. After that, Austin beckons. Wonder if James McMurtry will be playing there when we pass through?

Louisiana – this is the biggie for me. I love Cajun music so we're off to Lafayette for waltzes, two steps, gumbo and Po' Boy sandwiches. Then on to New Orleans of course, for both of us.

Now it gets crazy, we want to continue on by road to New York, so.....

Tennessee: first stop Memphis, then Nashville. We're hoping to see Tim O'Brien playing somewhere, sometime.

Not sure which route we'll take to get to New York from Nashville, but by then I'll be mighty tired (Pam doesn't drive), but I like the idea of crossing Kentucky by backroads, then West Virginia the same way.

Call us crazy kids, but that's the rough plan at this stage. A very long drive, taking several weeks, with no hurry to get home.

You can post your links and suggestions straight here in the comments box if you like, but you could also email me if you like, if that's easier, at my Garden Amateur email address, which is gardenamateur@gmail.com

All suggestions on any aspect of our plans are welcome, even those just saying "you're crazy" (but we do already know that).

We've given ourselves several months to plan the 2011 trip, but visiting some great gardens along the way is something we'd both love to do.

Thanks in advance for all your suggestions.