Sundown at Lake Tuross
Beautiful gum on the drive from Canberra to Tuross
Scene on the beach
Pelicans!!!!
Today was another travel day with us leaving Canberra about 10:00, heading Southeast to the South Coast of New South Wales. The trip was punctuated with many stops for photos and stops to look at the small towns. We particularly enjoyed seeing Bungendore, Braidwood and Bateman’s Bay. During the trip we had to cross the Great Dividing Range which are a series of mountains that parallel the coast thru much of Eastern Australia. The roads were typically curvy and speed limits were low but it was still a wonderful trip.
As we drove into Bateman’s Bay, we were stopped while they worked on a draw bridge over the river. It was different from any other that I have seen in that it didn’t split in the middle and go up, but instead a whole section was lifted upward by a series of pullys.
We stopped n Bateman’s Bay to have lunch and decided to go to the Bayview Hotel and have a “Pub Lunch”. The guys in front of us ordered a steak sandwich so we decided that we would split a sandwich, but order some additional chips (fries). We were amazed when the plate came out covered with chips and THEN she brought out a huge bowl filled with chips as well. We soldiered thru the ones on the plate and then had a go at the ones in the bowl, determined not to leave them uneaten. The biggest surprise of the meal was that the sandwich had sliced beetroot (picked beets) on it which we quickly removed before it had time to soak the bread with a red juice!! While we were eating, we were watching a sports channel that was televising competition Darts!!! We never did quite get the gist of the game, but there were hundreds of fans watching the competition and they even had slow-motion replays of the throws!!!
We have noticed several other road related items of interest. The first is that a passing lane is called an “overtaking” lane. Also, there are lots of mini road-trains……one large truck (about half the size of an 18-wheeler) with another trailer attached to the back of it.
I have also remembered several sayings that I thought were cute. When someone was describing a person who was not quite with it mentally she said that the woman had “lost the plot!!”. Our favorite term was “Grey Nomads”. This refers to retirees who have bought caravans (trailers) and spend their time traveling the country. It reminds us of a song on our John Williamson CD called “Old Farts in Caravan Parks”, which in turn reminds us of our friends Danny and Ruth Eves who we are heading to visit again.
We met Danny and Ruth at a caravan park in Tuross Heads, but we are staying in a small cabin just on the lake. This is an estuary river system coming from the mountains, but feeding into the ocean so that the water is salty and contains many of the ocean fish. D&R spend several weeks here in their caravan each summer.
We took a drive around the lakes and enjoyed photographing the ocean from “One Tree Point” and were even able to see a whale jumping out of the water in the far distance.
Upon returning to our house, we had dinner and sat outside watching the local life….both wild and human. We watched a young guy catching yabbies (crayfish) to use as bait. He would stick a long pipe into a yabby hole and then suction up a section of dirt and water. He would pour this into a sieve and look to see if any yabbies were there. It seemed a VERY slow process.
There is an abundance of bird life here, including pelicans and seagulls who show up whenever a fisherman comes in with fish to clean. There is also a female Magpie who comes on the deck to be fed crackers.