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Published: February 10th 2010
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Our newest granddaughter Maya, was not even 3 days old when we went travelling towards Bermagui to fill in time before afternoon visiting hours at the hospital. After enjoying a cuppa and a few tasty rice crackers for morning tea in the park at Tathra, Wendy began to experience severe abdominal pain. Unable to be seen by the local doctor for another 2 weeks, it was decided to head for Bega Hospital for immediate attention. The pain had quite significantly subsided, however common sense dictated that we should have it seen to. Our travelling companions, Maya’s other grandparents, were gracious enough to alter their plans for the day. We were deposited at the emergency entrance to the hospital at noon, and within 5 minutes Wendy had been ushered into a bed in Casualty. Many questions, tests and proddings later it was concluded that there could be a gall bladder problem. At about 5pm it was decided that she should be admitted, observed overnight, have an ultrasound the next day and take it from there. A bed was found ….. in the Children’s ward -an overflow ward, actually. Wendy had not been able to see Melanie and the baby, and there was
no way we wanted Mel to come visit the Emergency Department.
At 8:30pm, with no food or drink for about 12 hours, Wendy was taken to her room for the night, “Nil by Mouth” in preparation for the ultrasound, hooked up to an IV drip, nothing to do, and her daughter and baby downstairs. What to do? Just dozing off, and a visitor arrives in her room. Ah, it’s Mel offering books about newborn babies, and food - oh if only! Gaining permission from Wendy’s nurse, the 2 of them toddled off to Mel’s room so Wendy could make sure Maya was still as beautiful as she remembered. No pain now, but they turned a few heads, IV drip in tow.
Meanwhile Peter and Gareth went home to Nethercote to batch for the night.
The ultrasound showed up many pebbles in the gall bladder, Wendy was able to eat (more than 24 hours without food won’t kill you), and once that appeared not to present any further pain, was allowed to leave, with a follow up appointment with the surgeon in a week or two.
That’s NOT camping!
2 days later we moved to Pambula Beach Big 4/Discovery Caravan
Park/Resort. Yet another challenge with dump points, but way too many compensations. Heated floors in the shower dressing areas, heated “Adult Only” lounge area, great camp kitchen, indoor heated pool and spa, mini golf, jumping pillow - no, we didn’t try that, a mob of very tame kangaroos with joeys, large white sandy beaches and blue water filled with many species of fish to be caught, and sunny winter days. Ah Heaven!
We booked in for 2 nights, but then - like their motto states “Discovery Parks - Easy to find - hard to leave”, we decided to stay for one more night. This gave us the time to cycle into town for coffee, cycle around the wetlands conservation area, walk to the river mouth, and indulge in a dip in the heated pool and spa. We also got to have a shopping spree at Pambula Wholefoods (Mel’s favourite shop). Wendy felt like a local when the lady in the shop asked her how Mel had got on and she was able to report on Maya’s arrival.
Before we began to head for Nowra for repairs on leaky water tank, we got to enjoy bathing Maya and have one more cuddle.
That night we stayed in a park just outside Tathra, and with our van packed for an emergency departure, we were amused to see a P-plate driver come into the park, drive around twice tooting his horn very softly. Is that the best that Tathra hoodlums can do?
The next day we discovered Mystery Bay, 5 minutes south of Narooma. It’s a sleepy little settlement bordered by Eurobodalla National Park. The camping area was very shady and not too many large flat areas for a camp spot to set up. After morning tea we walked along the beach in the sunshine and then we wanted to check the notice board for the camp area. The closer we got, the more we realised that the camping area extended further on up the hill and around the bend. Here we found large flat sunny camp spots. Ah yes, let’s stay here for 2 nights. We can have our first campfire for this trip! We can open the bottle of red that David gave us to drink around a fire. We met Allan from South Australia who had been catching salmon from the rocks. He told us of a few great camp spots in Western Australia that we noted in our “Camps” book, and the next day at happy hour, Allan wandered over to tell us that they were heading south the next day. He had been fishing again but had to throw them all back because he had no room in his caravan fridge to keep any more. We could have cried - we would have loved to fry up fresh caught salmon over the fire. We must get our fishing gear out of the storage shed. We walked into the National Park and discovered that the area was quite a popular social gathering point in the late 1890’s and that the first bicycle velodrome in Australia was built here by the local community.
We had an arrangement with Peter’s Uncle John to be at his St George’s Basin home for lunch on Thursday, and we would stay with them for four days. On the Friday morning we took the van to Nowra for the repairs, we bought a fishing rod, and were back at the house by lunchtime. There was a lot of chatter about industrial relations, because Uncle John was influential in Peter’s career choice, and actually Peter worked with John in his consultancy business in Parramatta before Peter started his own business. It was great to spend some time with John and Rhondda and catch up on old times and family additions (photos, etc)
We left St George’s Basin on Monday morning around 9:30am and arrived safely back to our favourite camp site on the Gordon’s Jilliby Estate at 5:15 pm. Not a fast trip, but we don’t need to do those tiring express journeys these days.
Now we are back on the Central Coast for around 10 days to sort out some family and business matters and exchange things in the storage unit (i.e. discard those things we don’t need and gather the missing important things.)
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