Coastal Life

I am currently sitting outside the camper, the camping gear around me is semi packed, in preparation for moving day tomorrow. Around me the wind is quite gusty, the odd drop of rain falls, and its quite chilly. This quite adequately sums up our time spent on the southern NSW coast, and so its not with too much sadness that tomorrow we leave the coast for a fair while and start to head inland. First to Jindabyne, and then over border to the Murray River.

The last 10 days we have spent in two national park locations. The first was Mystery Bay, which is not quite in Eurobodella Nat Park, and run by the Shire Council. It’s quite a spectacular spot, we camped on cliffs a short walk through the bush from blow holes and amazing sea views. Facilities were no more than a long ‘dropper’ toilet (Tane’s word for a long drop), but that was OK. The beach was nice, and we made the most of the two fine days we had there, and visited it. There were great rocky ends to the beach which we all enjoyed exploring.

We also managed a visit to nearby Narooma for a shopping expedition and a coffee shop. The coffee shop was a converted boat shed, standing over the water. A great location and the kids enjoyed looking though some of the holes in the floor boards into the water below. That was until one of the two waitresses got a little narky at them about it. Our theory is that if you are going to serve ‘baby cinos’ then you are going to get kids coming in and kids are going to do kids things. We didn’t leave a tip…but I have one for them now… chill out a little.

Nearby we also went to the town of Tilba, an historic town where most (all?) of the buildings are over 100 years old. And so it has an arrangement of coffee shops, art galleries, lollie shops and a cheese factory. We spent a nice morning there exploring . Actually days in Mystery Bay were quite pleasant. Night times were a different story. We seem to be plagued by a mouse or two wherever we go, and Mystery Bay was one of the worst. This pesky mouse, which was bold enough to show itself several times during the time and narrowly missed both a crutch (from me) and a brick (from Tracy) crushing its head, had a go at everything. He did the usual chewing through the back of the pantry trip, but he’s not the first to do that. Then, added to that, he chewed holes in shoes, chewed the teat off Kezia’s milk bottle to get left overs inside, chewed the head and hair of Kezia’s “My Little Pony” (who is still scared to sleep with the light off – The pony that is, not Kezia). There was more, and we still keep discovering further items with holes in them. Tracys’ theory is that we have one mouse who travels with us somewhere underneath the trailer. Even here we have a resident mouse, in fact as I type he is poking his little ugly ‘about to get a crutch in the eye’ face just over the top of one of the boxes. That’s it, come closer buddy, lets see who gets chewed up this time.

And here is… Gillard’s Beach. Our last stop on the eastern coastal shores of OZ until probably July. We’d heard a lot of hype about this place, and its actually lives up to it. The campsites are secluded and right on the beach front, with grass. A pretty winning combination. We have actually been joined here by some friends from Perth, Peter and Freke Bolt, who are also traveling around the country. They contacted us last week to find out what our plans were, and arrived here a day after us and left this afternoon. We had a great time with them camping just next to us, and the kids really enjoyed someone to go and talk to and have breakfast with and generally hang around with. It even gave Tracy and I the opportunity to get out on our own for a few hours yesterday – so thanks heaps guys, much appreciated.

Nearby we have explored a few places. We went to Merimbula down the coast on our first evening, and again yesterday. This is where Tracy and I spent part of our honeymoon 10 years ago, so it was a bit special to go back. Just down the road we also have Tathra, which has an awesome coffee shop, and a very welcome laundry mat. Tracy also took the kids to Bega for some shopping on Saturday (I was a bit under the weather with the flu) but with all three kids in tow and in fine form, it wasn’t a site seeing tour.

The only real disappointment here has been the weather. It was forecasted as quite pleasant, but has generally been windy, overcast and a bit cold. It’s a shame because we didn’t get to enjoy what the place really has to offer, and that is stunning coastline. Its been a regular comment from locals that the weather for the last month has just been up the creek, very unusual for this time of year. Never mind, there have been plenty of other things to do.

For the last 10 days we have been pretty much out of range except for trips into town. So if you had a birthday and we forgot to text or phone you, that’s our excuse. Tomorrow we head to Jindabyne, up the mountains, where we should have reception, and an opportunity to post this.

Advertisement