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Published: March 20th 2012
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First of all, happy 80
th birthday to Sydney Harbour Bridge!It’s a shame we won’t be there for the celebrations, but be sure to make up for it when in another 10 days or so.
We had planned to stay the night in Ulladulla (Australia does have some funny town names) but when we got there it didn’t really float our boat, so we continued on to Jervis Bay and set up camp at “Green Patch” within Booderee National Park. This spot is BEAUTIFUL! It reminded us a little of Mount Buffalo and, like Mount Buffalo, it rained as soon as we arrived. The weather had cleared by lunchtime the following day and we went for a couple of nice long walks along the beaches and through the rainforest. We saw heaps of animals: kangaroos (eating grass in our camp site), kookaburras, crimson rosellas (they were so tame that one even landed on my head!), lizards, butterflies, crabs and mighty large stick insect. Apparently there are 206 species of birds here but who’s counting.
We were very interested to see planes overhead and parachutists (jumping rounds) landing in the water. As the federal government co-administers Booderee National Park, it’s home
to the naval training base HMAS Creswell.
In 1995 the Aboriginal community won a land claim in the Wreck Bay area and is now the other co-administrator of the area. Booderee actually means “plenty of fish” but, much to Dean’s dismay, spear fishing is prohibited here.
On the subject of Dean, the poor boy hasn’t been getting much quality sleep lately. Because we are squashed together so closely in the back of the van (and I like to move a lot while I’m sleeping) we have on occasions woken up with my finger in his eye… my finger up his nose… me hitting and kicking the wall of the van… I’ve gotten so used it now that I don’t even wake up any more!
Back to the history of this lovely area, Wreck Bay is so-named because in 1860 the Cape St George Lighthouse was built in the wrong place, causing 14 ships to be shipwrecked. A new lighthouse was built in a better place in 1889 but this also caused confusion due to there being two lighthouses visible, so the old one was destroyed by the Australian Navy in 1922. On our last morning, we
visited Murray’s Beach, Governor’s Head and the site of the old lighthouse’s ruins. This place could well be cursed as an incredible amount of tragedy struck the families of the lighthouse keepers – from typhoid and drowning to being killed by a horse kick and being accidentally shot in the head. It certainly felt eerie there.
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