Day 6

May 1, 2011- Day 6

Where: Buchan to Mallacoota-Shipwreck Creek, VIC

Dinner: Homemade rice noodles with tofu & abalone at Lucy's in Mallacoota

Lovely dinner followed by night time trip down the worst dirt road ever

        This morning we woke up at 5:30 and I didn't feel tired anymore. We obviously didn't want to get up in the dark and Pat didn't feel good, so we stayed in bed until we eventually fell back asleep. I got up again at 8 in the most beautiful fall colored campground ever. Trees everywhere and all of them were different colors. We got up and went on a short walk around the campground and up near the caves. We saw kangaroos feeding a few different places and they hopped by our campsite a few times. Such funny animals. Their faces look like deer but then also remind me of rabbits, and they make thudding noises as they hop along. We made poached eggs on toast for breakfast and then we made coffee and sat at a picnic table where we read the paper. We also found a power outlet nearby and I was able to charge my laptop for a while. Last night I charged my camera battery in the bathroom for a few hours. After our leisurely outdoor breakfast we were able to take unlimited hot showers!! It felt so good, oh man. We didn't leave the campground until around noon which is late compared to our usual routine. It would have been a nice area to hike, but Pat still wasn't feeling that well and our legs were a bit sore from climbing around in the caves the day before.

We drove on a back windy road through gorgeous landscape on our way to the next town. The scenery started off as fields with lots of sheep and cows. After seeing what great environments cows can live in I really don't want to buy meat from cows that are kept in horrible living conditions. These looked like the happiest cows ever, grazing in their huge pastures. Is it possible to buy friendly beef back home? Maybe if I looked into local beef. That was just what I kept thinking after seeing so many huge fields full of small herds of animals. It seems so much more natural!

        After the fields we drove into a dense forest. The rode got really windy which was a little annoying to navigate, but it was great driving through such a beautiful area. That road lasted for about an hour before we hooked onto the highway and ended up in the small town of Mallacoota right on the water. We had read in the Lonely Planet about a small cafe called Lucy's that served homemade rice noodles. We decided to stop there for dinner and when we arrived we found the place full of people there for an open mike night out on the balcony. It's a really small town and everyone there seemed to know each other. It reminded me so much of Colville! Lucy, the owner, was an energetic Chinese woman who knew all the customers and who made great food! Pat ordered noodles with local abalone which was fun for him to eat for the first time. I had the vegetable and tofu version. Apparently tonight was Lucy's last night open before going on a two month vacation overseas. It was fun to listen to people wishing her a nice trip and it was nice just to watch everyone greet each other as they ordered drinks and listened to the music. Kids ran all over the place and when Lucy got too busy different people would jump back behind the bar and help her. It was all the wonderful aspects of a small town that I remember so well from growing up. Reminded me of going to coffee houses with my parents or community events where we knew at least 50%-75% of the people there. I'm so happy that I got to grow up in a small town and experience community like that because it's unlikely I would ever choose to move to a small town. Now I get to live the city lifestyle which suits me better at this point in my life. I think I've gotten to have the best of both worlds.

        It had just gotten dark when we finished eating and we knew we had 15 km to the campsite. What we didn't realize was that most of that distance was on unpaved, horribly unkept dirt roads. I was driving and it started out as very washboarded dirt road with large potholes sporadically placed. I had to swerve all over the road to avoid them. Then it turned into forest with a rocky dirt rode. Now I had to swerve to avoid rocks that looked big enough to puncture the tires. We finally reached a sign that said we had 7 km to go. I told Pat I wanted to turn around and abort the mission because it was dark and I was afraid of getting a flat tire. But really we had just about as far to go if we turned around then if we just kept driving. So we continued along at a very, very slow pace, weaving all over the place avoiding rocks and potholes. I was stressed and not at all enjoying it. I was so relieved when we finally reached the campsite, and there were just two others guys camped there. We parked near them. At this point I think because my mind was already freaking out a bit, I started imagining every scary story or creepy news article I have read about things that can happen out in the forest at night. It made me a bit paranoid of the neighbors and all around just a fairly unhappy person. I just wanted to get in the van and go to sleep. So that marks the worst stretch of driving so far and we have to drive out in the morning. Fun times.