Merimbula & the Sapphire Coast

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Merimbula was a good choice for a sunshine and sea base for a few days. The Merimbula Beach Holiday Park on Short Point was all we hoped it would be, except for the couple of grey days and the couple of torrential downpours. It wasn't their fault that we didn't use the pool 50 metres from our luxury cabin or swim off the stunningly beautiful and varied beaches around the town. Merimbula's got the hard hitting surf beaches both sides of the estuary. Dip your foot in and the undertow tries to drag it to New Zealand. 'Never Swim Alone'. Protected by a sand bar or the cliffs, other beaches are more benign, either with the odd black swan cruising across a lake or with windsurfers catching the breeze. Red rocks - mini Ulurus? - reminiscent of Cornwall, apart from the colour.

The holiday park was a bit quiet - only about one third full. All the loud hormonal schoolkids are back at school (and their teachers!), so the population seemd to be mainly young or older Aussies, either wrinklies wandering around looking for soft food to chew on, or young mums in impossibly next-to-nothing clothes,looking for soft food for their pre-school kids to chew on. We had booked a few nights into one of the honeymoon retreats (others were occupied by other geriatrics), which was a superbly equipped luxury 'cabin' , complete with full kitchen, spa bath and a TV in 3 places. Tip: Don't drop the remote in the bath/shower. Verandah and bedroom with ocean view and sound of crashing surf. Magic.

I managed a game of golf on the course which was part of the reason for choosing Merimbula in the first place. Great course with luxury club house 5 times the size of South Winchester. Bill, the lovely guy from Melbourne I met on the course, pays $220 a year as a 5 day member for unlimited golf. This includes the odd snake or two on the 17th (I deliberately hit right on that hole) and unlimited contact with the sizeable kangaroo population. They were so laid back - snoozing under the trees in the semi rough - that there was not even a flicker of interest from them when I hit my shot of the day to within 5 feet from 180 yards out. They're obviously used to seeing a better class of golf than I provided. Either that or they were planning on watching the highlights on Fox Sports later on. Enough of golf - you can have too much of it - except to say that the south coast of NSW is golfer paradise, with a beautiful seaside course every 10 miles or so, with plenty of room for visitors - 'Naa, you've no need to book - just turn up when yer like - you'll be right.'

One of our excursions took us to Bega -'Home of Bega , the Australian cheese capital'. Cheese factory had a visitor centre, with tastings, cafe and good loos ('Bulls'or 'Cows'- sic) , so we spent half an hour with a coffee in front of a rolling promo video, which included the classic line of voiceover, over pictures of endless slabs of mild cheddar rolling through the production line: ' Here you can see the birth of all kinds of cheese........from blocks..................to SLOICES.' We still have a half eaten slab of Bega Vintage in our Esky.

We called in at Tathra - cafe in the sanddunes - too windy for the beach, but spent an interesting half hour in a tiny museum at the restored Tathra Wharf. Captain Cook (that man again) named the dual hump of a mountain behind the town Mount Dromedary. Further up the coast we rattled down a steep unsealed raod (=dirt track) - please don't tell Hertz - to Aragunnu Beach, part of Mimosa Rocks National Park. Felt like Robinson Crusoe (and his missus) on the beach. Twee tourism supports the ridiculously named Tilba Tiba and its larger neighbour- Tilba. In the midst of the tweeness of tea shops and boutique B & Bs there's an essence of Australia pub - the Dromedary Hotel. It was good to see half of Captain Cook's crew in front of the pub with pints in their hands, talking tattoos and voyages of discovery. When we got to Narooma we were hungry and Narooma was getting dusk-gloomy. Nothing for it - try the golf club, which I knew from extensive research was up on the cliffs. The golf club was a cafeteria on industrial scale. A menu as long as your arm, big piles of cheap food. We fell for it and were pleasantly served either a plate of disgusting looking and tasting chicken (R) or skewered pawns (M). Sorry, Narooma GC , but first impressions will take a time to eradicate, even if it would be an awesome place to play golf and watch whales simultaneously. Whales best from Sept-Nov; prawns best left in kitchen.

At risk of repeating the obvious, the beaches we've seen, walked and sat on make Skeggy look like a quaint little strip of sand. No wonder James Cook sailed up and down this coast. He just needed somewhere to park his Esky, read the Yorkshire Post and re-knot the hanky on his head, before reporting back to HQ on his laptop astrolabe and claim for the Crown. He'[d obviously never crossed the Severn Bridge, cos there's nowhere similar in Newport, Cardiff or Swansea which look at all like anywhere here. What a name - New South Wales. (Later thought : Gower ?). Not so Sydney, named after the weedy one in Little & Large, who was also British Home Secretary at some stage. Even the admirable James Cook conveniently forgot that virtually all places in Australia, particularly those with a water supply, have had perfectly good indigenous names for thousands of years. I like the though there's a mix of names around - Woolloomooloo next to Potts Point and Paddington in Sydney, Kiribilli sitting virtually under the harbour bridge. I like best the names of roads and watercourses in the countryside which conjure up the romance(?) of the parochial and personal . Two favourites I spotted - Boggy Creek and - a few k's later - Blind Joe's Creek. Saw no sign of Joe. Probably sharing a stubbie with Jimmy Cook on the beach, having a game of 'Name That Creek'. 'I'll name that creek in two,yer Pommie bastard.'

Not being wild life experts or even animal fans, we are fast ticking off the 'I-Spy Book of Australian Wildlife. Last time in Oz, we ticked them all off in one go at Healesville Sanctuary near Melbourne. This time the little buggers are more spread out and are not in cages or enclosures. I give you my list of animals I've seen so far: Possums (several in Melbourne Parks), kangaroos (many - see golf above) , bell-birds (just), pelicans (photo to prove it), several flocks of parrots/parakeets which flew past unlabelled, prawns (skewered) and chicken (re-gurgitated). Current mission is to see wombat in the wild. I reckon there's only one in the whole of Australia and he lives in Healesville. But I still half believe that the advisory yellow roadside sign with a cute black silhouette of a wombat may one day result in our seeing a large wombat emerging from the bush and thumbing a lift with us back to Healesville.

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Comments

[hazel]

Great to see and hear latest news.I take it you didnt want to swim in case you were mistaken for a wrinklie and not the Winchester Bill Bryson that you are.That sun bed looks very inviting Rosie glad your enjoying yourselves. hazel