Where: Shipwreck Creek to Tilba, NSW
Dinner: Scotch fillet steak with sauteed mushrooms, shallots and zucchini
We've made it to a new state!!
This morning we woke up in the forest in the great unknown forest we arrived in late last night. The trees are super tall! They aren't gum trees because they have bark so I'm not sure what they are. We are in the Cro???? National Park. We had toast and then we made coffee to take with us as we walked down to check out the beach. The roads here are terrible, but the beach showed me why people would want to camp out here. It was gorgeous, and it a very different way than most of the beaches we have seen so far. Instead of long white sandy beaches the sand is golden, it's surrounded by dense forests and then is a creek running from the forest down through the sand to the ocean. The creek has carved out what looks like a small canyon in the sand. The water in the creek is almost a rust color, probably from the iron oxide in the rocks surrounding the beach. There were huge rock formations just off the beach which caused the big waves to crash as they came in. This morning it was a bit overcast so the sky had a particularly foreboding look to it. I loved it. As we walked around the sun came out more and the morning light caste wonderful warm light on everything. It was photography paradise and probably my favorite beach experience yet. It was hard to finally pull myself away from the beach, especially knowing that we had to drive back out that wretched road. We have noticed that in a lot of the forests we've driven through the trees are black in areas from fire. I wonder if this is from the fires that were particularly bad in 2009, or if there have been a lot of fires in this area every year. I know they do get a lot of bush fires here and it's s shame to see so much of the forest has been affected. It's nice to be traveling in a time when the fire danger is so low, and so are the number of travels. I do wish it was warm enough to lay by the beach, however. Maybe as we get farther north.
Driving out of the road in the daylight was much faster and thankful we made it through the whole ordeal with no damage to the van! We opted for the “no insurance” option with the van rental so we can't hurt this thing! It could use a wash at this point, but I think this way it shows that it has out in some serious time on the road. Today we passed another Jucy van and I was excited to wave at them as I now feel that we share a common bond with other Jucy drivers. They waved back so they obviously feel the same way ;)
We left the state of Victoria today and entered into New South Wales! Big event! For those of you not familiar with Australian geography (like me before I got here), NSW is the state Sydney is in and we should be rolling into the big city in about 2 days. We've finally reached the east coast and we now begin driving up it. Our final destination of Cairns is up near the top of the east coast. It feels good to be headed in a Northernly direction. We stopped at an info center (I am really beginning to love these things) and got a whole new set up of free maps for the new state. In the info center I met an older man who is headed to Seattle and Alaska next week for a cruise and a visit to Canada. At the last info center I met a woman who was headed on a similar trip. Kindof funny. He sure was happy to hear about Seattle and WA State.
On our way to Tilba, tonight's stop, we stopped in the town of Bega which is the home of one of Austalia's big cheese manufacturers. Pat has been looking forward to this cheese part of the trip and he was stoked to get to stop and sample some cheeses. We didn't particularly love any of the cheeses here however, so we decided to head on to the next cheese making town, Tilba. Tilba is a very small, incredibly quaint little town in the hills. It's been named some sort of “heritage town” or something like that. There are pastures with cows all over the place so it seems logical that there would be some cheese making going on. This little town had two brands of cheese being sold, from two different nearby farms. These cheeses were excellent and we ended up buying four different types of cheese. I think that should take up about 1/3 of our little fridge, but Pat couldn't imagine leaving the town without a decent assortment of cheeses for the road. Not that I'm going to argue with having delicious cheeses around :) All of the little stores in the town had nicely decorated store fronts and antique looking signs. It really was unique. And the hills surrounding it are all a vibrant green because there has been a lot of rain recently (very unusual for this part of the world), making for quite a picturesque place. For a minute I think it would be great to live somewhere like this, but then the reality of it sets in and it doesn't seem like such a good idea anymore. Maybe if I were older and retired or something. But it certainly is beautiful!
A bit further down the road and we arrived at our campsite right near the ocean. It's the first time we've been able to see the ocean from our van. This beach has another fantastic set of rocks and even a cave. The waves are bigger here and they crash against the rocks much louder. From the van right now the waves are still loud. We're looking forward to walking around more in the morning. For dinner Pat made steaks (which actually sounded rather good to me tonight?) along with mushrooms and zucchini. Today he bought a caste iron pan because he hates cooking on cheap metal pans. He was pretty pleased with his purchase tonight as we worked to “season” it for the first time. Cute kid. Whatever he needs to keep him happy as the chef is fine with me :) We'll see if he ever gets tired of the job and tries to pass it off to me.
No comments:
Post a Comment