Freddie's Place

Some of the last adventures Greg and I had I Australia were times we spent with Fred and the exploration with him of the area around the ranch. Freddie and Chris own 20 acres on Micalo Island, which is just out of town, and on the banks of the Clarence River, which is one of the biggest rivers in Eastern Australia.

Fred and Chris picked Yamba because it had all the things they were looking for; it was near the ocean with places that had surf and property that could be purchased at a reasonable price so they could have horses. They also had children, Casey now age 20 and Colby age 18 were 10 and 8 when they moved there and they wanted a good environment to their raise kids. Yamba had all the things they were looking for, so after a year of renting they found their dream ranch and bought it. That was ten years ago.

Freddie is rightly very proud of his ranch and loved playing the host and guide. The place was apparently a wreck when they bought it and he and Chris have made a lot of improvements in it and additions.

The barn is Freddie’s pride and joy and Chris’s too for that matter. Chris who was allergic to horses when they moved down there has become a dedicated dressage rider and feels about riding the same way we do about surfing. When the kids were young they had a big horse trailer they could haul 4 horses with and they would take the horses and go all over camping, packing and exploring with them. So the horses they have are for more than just looks. Freddie too is an avid horseman, and explored the countryside with his friend Hopper, and believe me there is a lot of very beautiful country to explore around yamba, it is horseback riding paradise.

Since I have not been on a horse for a good 25 years and Greg is not particularly fond of them we did not tour the property on horseback, but instead took the trusty ranch vehicle that you see pictured here.

Freddie has some big ponds on his property that rise and ebb with the flow of the tide. They used too be shrimp farm ponds and there are many more of them on the adjacent property. Someone invested a lot of money in making but before they could be used the Japanese flooded the market with cheap prawns and the bottom fell out of the market. Today they are a beautiful area of ponds for wading birds and swans. You can see in these pictures how peaceful they are. Apparently in the future acreage will be sold to developers who have destroyed wetlands in the developing of their project, and they will restore the shrimp pond area to it original pristine state. So everybody will win on this one. It really was a lovely place.

The next day Freddie took us in his small “tinny” for a backwater tour of yamba. Today instead of his cowboy hat he had on his captain’s cap, and after getting everything in the boat (which was an adventure in it’s self), we were off. I think it would be safe to say that life with Freddie is an adventure and he lives it with gusto. Freddie has high entertainment value and is one of the best storytellers I have heard, something he loves to do.

Seeing Yamba from the water gave us a whole different view of it as there are some very large fancy homes that have been built right on the water in developments like the Mandelay Bay area in Oxnard. The Clarence River low lands have been dredged out creating channels with houses with waterfront docks . In previous blogs we had remarked that you didn’t see a lot of bit houses in Yamba. That was because we hadn’t been here! This is a New Port Beach in the making. Yamba has a big breakwater that has been built creating a large working harbor. There is a lot of working fishing boats that go out of here as well as many fancy pleasure boats.

After a tour of the harbor area we headed out the harbor mouth to the open seas. Now Freddie and Greg have a long of history of taking trips up to the Ranch to go surfing, but I did not know this at the time and after some of the trouble we had when we first got in the boat, I wasn’t sure what Freddie’s level of seamanship was. It was late afternoon by the time we hit the open seas and just let me say it was not glassy. We first went over to the Iluka side of the break-wall to see the surf spot over there and we went quite close in. There were some good size swells moving through and I was a little bit nervous. I could just see a repeat performance of the scene in Big Wednesday where the boat gets capsized!! We then went around to the Yamba side and a couple of dolphins came along side to greet us. We made it back through the break-wall and high tailed it for home just as the sun was setting (remember we are on the east coast so the sun sets over the land not the water) and it was a spectacular one. Another good time with Freddie!