Blogs from Bega, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

Had a good night in a comfortable room and got away about 9 am to the Bega Cheese Factory had a good look around and coffee and cake drove on out after filling up with gas toward Tathra on the coast, the old town up on top of the headland took a drive down to the beach where they were having Surf Life Saving Comps didn't hang around for long and onto Merimbula through very green farmland and estuaries. Reached Merimbula about mid day very busy and a good size upmarket looking seaside town ... lots of Oyster farms up the estuary and their EAT festival on along the estuary, we found a park quite close and had a walk along the food tents baiscally cleaned out of all their fare and only cash sales so ... read more

We left Merrimbula Lake today and set off for Bermagui via Bega (to see the Bega Cheese Factory). Unfortunately, visitors can no longer go around the factory because of the Health and Safety Regulations regarding food preparation. We had to be content with watching a video about it, instead. They do have a Historical Display upstairs which shows a lot of the old equipment, like butter churns, milk separators, cheese rakes etc, and the original bark hut where the Bega Cheese was first made (complete and also upstairs!). The funniest things were the full sized cow replicas. Two had lovely rural scenes painted all over them, including one gum tree following the swishy line of one cow’s tail. The third was coloured like a Jersey cow and looked quite normal until you went round the side ... read more

Even tho’ some computers invent their own viruses when they see another of my blogs coming…here it is…. Cows, lots of cows, relentlessly shuffling towards the milking shed. And not your old wooden-slat, bendy roof, iconic rural shed but an all-steel, concrete floored, gleaming, stainless steel pipes and tanks…and no-one in sight. It all looks somewhat authentically rural but it’s not. On closer inspection, like rolling down the window, the stench hits you. This is not your rich country smell of cattle and wet hay, of memories of Royal Show livestock sheds, of small farms of my youth, it’s unnatural, almost chemical, it stinks of something really off. This is the smell of 21st century mechanized, industrialized, milk manufacturing. The cows are like robots, cowbots?…the thick mud stinks, The dust was blowing into every crack ... read more