Edgeworth’s Gary Lawless has been reading with interest our stories on black panthers, yowies, Tassie tigers and bunyips. “What is it about all these recent sightings of mythical creatures that keep popping up lately?”, Gary said. “They seem to populate our country unimpeded by man’s ever-expanding presence in their adopted habitat. “There was even a possible bear sighting at Minmi a while back, which was also reported in the Herald.” Gary reckons we should also report on “other mythical objects or places”. “I have one that people of my generation might remember,” Gary, now 65, said. He was about eight years old when he first heard of the “Minmi breakwater”. “At the time, we were living at Cardiff South after recently moving from Stockton.” Having grown up at Stockton, he knew what a breakwater was. He fished from the Stockton breakwater many times with his father and grandfather. “I had no real idea where Minmi was at the time,” he said. When told by his father that “we were going on an outing to Minmi breakwater with neighbours to pick blackberries, I was excited and couldn’t wait to go”. Gary gathered his fishing gear and swimming trunks, eager for an adventure. “Where there is a breakwater, there is usually a beach of some kind and assorted fishing gear,” he said. He was soon on the receiving end of “roars of laughter”. “It soon became apparent that I was the butt of a joke that my loving parent, along with the adult neighbours and their kids, had contrived for my benefit. “Needless to say I was a bit put out, not only because of the joke at my expense, but because I really wanted to go fishing and was also looking forward to a swim.” The end result was that he stayed home with his mum in a foul mood, while his father and siblings went to Minmi and returned with buckets of blackberries. “I didn’t get to go swimming or fishing that day, but the blackberry pies my mum cooked made up for the disappointment.” To this day, he’s still perplexed by the Minmi breakwater. Was it his dad’s cheeky invention or a local fable? Fearsome Flood Here in the Hunter, we understand the power of flood. A coal ship getting stuck on a beach is one of those epic stories you don’t easily forget. A mangled sign isn’t quite as impressive, but it does tend to catch your attention.Topics snapped this photo in Murwillumbah last week. It shows the carnage left behind by a deluge that hit the area in late March.  No Escape from News During our visit to northern NSW, we stayed in a cabin in a rainforest. One of the aims was to get away from news, just for a few days. You understand.  A day into our jaunt, we heard the unmistakable chopping noise of a helicopter. Then we kept hearing it. Again and again. Could it be some kind of military exercise, we wondered. Was a criminal on the loose? We soon discovered that an ultralight plane had crashed in the area. Some locals questioned whether the 72-year-old pilot and his green plane would ever be seen again, given the area’s dense rainforest. Thoughts turned to the single-engine Cessna which crashed in the Barrington Tops in August 1981 with five people on board. It was never seen again. The Murwillumbah crash didn’t turn out that way. A searcher on horseback found the plane and dead pilot on a private property. Alas, the news had followed us deep into the rainforest.