One photo features Roy Neuss, Albert’s father, and his 1936 Plymouth parked outside the original Steampacket Hotel in Nelligen, circa 1939.

“You can just see dad [Roy] and my grandfather [Charlie] coming out of the pub, where they probably enjoyed a drink while waiting for the punt [the bridge at Nelligen didn’t open until 1964] to cross the river,” explains Albert, whose brother Val, sister Shirley and grandmother are posing by the car.

“Back then, it took two days driving from their home near Glendale, in what is now Namadgi National Park, to get to Batemans Bay,” reveals Albert. “They camped overnight at Cabbage Tree Creek [at the bottom of the Clyde] on the first night.”

As to the mystery long object in the bag visible on the passenger side of the car, “Oh, that’s their tent, there wasn’t enough room for it in the car so they wedged it between the spare tyre and the bonnet for the trip,” explains Albert. “It would have blocked the driver’s view but they didn’t worry about that in those days”.

Incredibly, Albert still has the Plymouth, which he has driven down the coast many times in the last 40 years or so, and which he still shows at antique car events. He even rephotographed it in front of the original Steampacket Hotel in the late 1980s.

“After dad passed the Plymouth on to me, I drove it into the ground and sold it in around 1960,” reports Albert, who later tracked it down and bought it back from its Sydney owner around 1970 to “bring it back to its former glory”.

The second photo shows members of the Post family from Bombala, Albert’s wife’s family, enjoying a rest while a Chev truck chugs around a hairpin corner of the Clyde, circa 1926.

“I’ve been told the kids picked fronds off the ferns as apparently prior to this trip they had never seen ferns before,” explains Albert, who would love to know which of the hairpin corners on the Clyde the photo was taken.

To me, it looks a bit like Pooh’s Corner both before the cave (created in World War II and stocked with explosives in case of Japanese invasion from the coast towards Canberra) and the subsequent proliferation of teddy bears. Or is it Government Bend?

It seems that Eden O’Mara isn’t the only Canberran to have a face ‘‘materialise’’ in a medical scan (Holy Moly, is that the face of the Virgin Mary in a Canberra woman’s MRI scan?, December 28).

“I was mystified and nearly felt possessed when I too had a clear face in my tummy on an X-ray of my pelvis earlier last year,” reports Mr F of Giralang.

“Doctors were baffled,” reports Mr F, who wishes to remain anonymous as he confesses to feeling “eerily uncomfortable with the prospect of the internet having my pelvis available on public record”.

However, after studying the X-ray for some time, Mr F developed a theory for the unexpected face. “There was an uncanny resemblance to the lady sonographer,” he reports. “To me it seems clear it was her reflection when processing the film, if that’s a thing.”

Pouring cold water on Mr F’s theory, however, is that the sonographers contacted by this column report that there is no way that the appearance of a technician performing the imaging can be in any way transferred to an X-ray.

Meanwhile, several other readers questioned the suggestion by some that the face in O’Mara’s MRI of her right wrist may have been the Virgin Mary.

“That woman gets around, she was spotted on someone’s toast a while back,” reports Greg Johnson, referring to the world-wide phenomena of images of the Virgin Mary appearing in strange places.

“Humans naturally see patterns, it’s a phenomena called pareidolia,” reports Russell Nankervis, adding “it’s not that extraordinary”.

Dr Steven Novella, of the Skeptics Guide to the Universe and a clinical neurologist and assistant professor at Yale University School of Medicine, explains the phenomena in his blog for the ness.com.

“Pareidolia is the tendency for our brains to match known patterns to random sensory noise, most commonly applied to images. The most familiar image to the human brain is the human face, and so perhaps the most common experience of pareidolia is the seeing of a face in the clouds, in a rust stain, tree bark, tortilla shell, a hillside, or on NASA photos of other worlds.”

A number of eagle-eyed readers thought they may have uncovered a less-than-subtle subliminal message in the design of Peter Solness’ striking light painting to mark ‘The Wool Road’ at Jervis Bay (The Wool Road, December 22).

“I wonder whether any other woolgrowers noticed the resemblance of some of the light painting [to] the Woolmark logo”, asks Kevin Rattigan of Berremangra (between Yass and Jugiong).

For the uninitiated, the Woolmark logo was designed by Italian graphic artist Francesco Saroglia (an alias of Italian architect, graphic designer and artist Franco Grignani) and according to The Woolmark Company “has helped reinvent the global perception of wool as a natural, contemporary and glamorous fibre”.

While the backstory as to why a calf was being transported by an elderly lady driving an SUV through the streets of Gungahlin (Spotted: No Bull!  January 5) remains a mystery, the photo brought back memories for Jenny Thompson whose grandfather gave her family a jersey calf many years ago.

This column continues to receive photos of pelicans perched atop poles right up and down the South Coast. The record so far is an even dozen photographed by Michael Ziebell of Jerrabomberra at Warilla. “Walking on the path beside the Lake Illawarra

entrance channel, my wife spotted the pelicans sitting on top of the lamp posts,” reports Ziebell.

However, my favourite pelican pic so far is this one snapped by Alan Nicol of Moruya Heads which features a lone specimen perched on a green box in front of Regatta Point Caravan Park on Wallaga Lake, just north of Bermagui.

“I’m guessing the box is supposed to be a nest box but not sure what species of bird would use it,” ponders Nicol, who has “never seen it used for anything but a pelican perch”.

Clue: Part of a popular lakeside walk

Degree of difficulty:  Easy - Medium

Last week

Congratulations to Roz Barker of Bonython as the first reader to correctly identify last week’s photo, sent in by David Osmond of Dickson, as an old pedestrian bridge over Bindi Brook near Nerriga.

“I imagine the Nerriga pub is doing quite nicely from all the Canberra peeps who have discovered this interesting alternative way to get to the coast,” writes Barker, who just beat June Smith of Weetangera and Maryanne Ellem of O’Connor to the prize. Special note to Stephen Goggs who “noticed the footbridge for the first time when driving home from Milton earlier this week” and Peter Deane who recalls seeing the now condemned footbridge in use when the creek was in flood “many moons ago”.

How to enter: Email your guess along with your name and address to timtheyowieman@bigpond.com. The first email sent after 10am, Saturday January 26 will win a double pass to Dendy - The Home of Quality Cinema.