Day 8

May 3, 2011- Day 8

Where: Depot Beach, NSW

Dinner: Brussel sprouts, salami, crackers, and our fancy new aged cheese

Rock shelves at sunset. Wow.

        It rained a lot last night which was quite loud in the van. Pat and I both slept pretty well though which is something I appreciate these days. I don't usually sleep horribly, but I do wake up pretty frequently. Last night we parked on a slant so I kept rolling into the middle. I woke up and made us scrambled eggs and then we packed up fairly quickly and moved to the car park so that we could access the beach easier. Since it was overcast this morning the beach looked especially striking again. I love sunny days at the beach, but it's nice to have cloudy days as well to mix it up. It was similar to yesterday morning, in that the sun started to come out a bit while we were there, making for incredible lighting. The waves were probably the biggest I've ever seen and then crashed so violently on the rocks. It was scary just imaging ever ending up in waves like those! We had a really nice walk out around a jetty, but it got cut off because the tide was in too far. I love walking on the beach in the morning with my travel mug full of coffee :) So nice. We continued up the coast to Bateman's Bay which is the biggest town we've been in since we left. It even had a shopping center! It was nice to be back in civilization just long enough for a quick lunch at Subway and for Pat to get some “delicious” mall chinese food. We had a look around town and then headed back to the van. I got in and turned on the ignition but the van wouldn't start. Oh noooo! Well luckily Jucy Vans have free roadside assistance so I called the office in Sydney and they figured out where we were and sent a truck in town to help us. A guy was there in 15 min to jump start the battery and we were good to go again. Only a minor setback! I realized that I had turned on the headlights to get out of a parking garage and forgot to turn them off when we parked again. Ooops. I'm so glad it happened in a major town though. Back on the road again. Our camping spot for the night is only 15 minutes out of Bateman's Bay so we arrived well before dark.

         When we arrived at the campsite in a national park there were 10 kangaroos eating grass in a lawn across from the rangers office. We were able to get up really close to them which was fun. Don't worry, we didn't get TOO close. It sounds like you can touch them on the back and they may not mind (especially these guys which are obviously used to people), but we decided not to risk getting kicked by a roo. Ya know, didn't sound like something we wanted to do this evening. We're spoiled tonight with all the amenities! Warm showers, laundry, AND drinking water. Living the life. We even stopped and bought a bundle of firewood today because we decided we weren't getting the full camping experience without camp fires. So tonight we have a proper campfire!

        After choosing our campsite (with a power outlet for charging our electronics!) we noticed that the site next two us had two camper vans in it. We recognized one of them, a bright yellow one, from an infor booth we stopped at a couple of days ago. We're obviously on the same trek northward. Anyways, there were 4 people outside who were covered in brightly colored birds. Like literally, one girl had 4 of them on her arm and 4 of them on her head. They had bread out to feed the birds and there were at least 30 of them there eating, three different varieties of small tropical colored parakeets. They were beautiful! Bright reds and greens and yellows. I've never seen so many of these bright birds in one place. I felt like I was in Hawaii or something. We asked if we could take some pictures and brought some of our own bread to feed them. Within minutes we too had birds perched upon our arms and heads. I'm not the world biggest bird lover so it freaked me out a bit to have one burrowing it's beak into my hair, and when the bread was gone and one nipped my finger I screamed and ducked away from them all. At one point Pat had 4 of them sitting on his hand fighting over a piece of bread. It was such a fun thing to come upon in a campsite. The star of the event was a very rare white and light pink cockatoo that is normally found 1000 km inland (according to an older man watching us). It stopped by to have a bread snack, at which point about 5 more people came over to take pictures. It really was a pretty amazing bird, and apparently we were rather privileged to see one in this area. As though this wasn't enough, we spotted our first kookaburra up in a tree nearby, watching the action down below. I didn't realize that kookaburra are carnivorous, but apparently they are. I suspect he was trying to spot dinner. He was an intimidating bird because all other birds fly away if you get near them or make a loud noise, but this guy just stared you down if you got close. Was he actually planning on how we was going to eat us? Suspicious little fellow.

        After all this bird action we decided to take a walk down to the beach just as the sun was beginning to set. We walked back past all the feeding kangaroos down to the water where we found another amazing beach with long rolling waves and tall rock walls around it. As we walked out along the rock walls we realized that there rock plateaus that gradually got higher the further out of the water they went. It's difficult to describe, but they almost looked like really wide, very gradual rock staircases. I think they word they use is “rock shelves.” The started in very shallow water that just covered your feet, so we took out shoes off and walked in. We went quite a ways out and the water only ever got up over our feet. We came around a bend of rocks and found that the rock shelves went on for miles, eventually leading out to some small islands. This already incredible scene was made even better by the fact that is was sunset and the sky was beautiful shades of pink. The colors were reflecting off the water, giving everything a pink glow. I'm probably getting repetitious in explaining pretty beach scenes with great lighting, but I think these are the scenes that make me feel the most alive. I'm torn between wanting to capture every exquisite detail with my camera and trying to enjoy the moments without a camera distracting me. I must say though, tonight I am so glad that I was able to capture some of it on camera because I have truly never seen anything like this. I can't wait to go back tomorrow and wade around in the water more. I imagine in the summer these beaches are full of people, but because it's autumn here the beaches have mostly been completely empty.

        The time at the beach had made me so happy that I didn't even care what else we did tonight. We came back and Pat made our first campfire which was a vast improvement to our evening routine. The sun sets around 5:30 so we usually cook around then and eat in the van. Once it's dark (at the late hour of 6pm) you really can't be outside so end up in the van reading or playing card games. Tonight we were able to sit out by the fire until much later, which felt better than being cooped up inside. I foresee many more campfires in our future. Today was full of wonderful surprises and I was especially thankful to be able to be out on this adventure. I can't wait to see what else we find as we head north.