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Day 23 - Lakes Entrance to Mallacoota - 209 kms - 2 hr 30 mins (incl fuel stop)
We were moving on today so needed to get up and get going! 10am seems to be the time that most campsites want you off the pitch so we grab a shower, skip breakfast and get on with the packing up procedure. The pop up roof on the caravan needs to come down and the legs need winding up. The water hose and the power leads need to be gathered up and then the roof fixed down and the door locked up. We’ve got into the habit of taking the table apart as it’s not fixed to the floor and the TV now lives in the recycle box so it doesn’t fall off the kitchen unit! It’s just a little routine that we need to get into and then it’s on with the hitch up. It’s easy enough to back Pie (!) on to Sweetie (!!) and then it’s a case of making sure the chains are reattached, the jockey wheel is taken off and all the lights are checked. Once that’s done we’re good to go.
The road trip to Mallacoota
took us through interesting scenery, past what we think was the Gippsland Rail cycle way, past tracks and creeks named James and Raymond plus a multitude of beautiful rivers.
We’re in the ‘caravan waving club’ now, woohoo! It’s an unwritten thing where if you’re towing a caravan you wave at others doing the same! We don’t know if it’s across the camping board yet though, whether camper trailers, off roaders and people driving motorhomes all wave to each other or if it’s specific groups only!! We’ll let you know if we managed to cross contaminate the waving activity! You know what we’re like, we’ll wave at anyone!
We saw some burnt bushland on the journey but don’t know if was as a result of bush fires or the local authorities burning off. There’s also some road-working activity further along in the same area and they seem to be spraying something at the trees - it stinks whatever it is!
We turn off the main A1 and the scenery is rolling hills and then a steep climb downward, and it really is steep too! Mallacoota is a tiny little place, we drive through the town to get to
the Mallacoota Foreshore Holiday Park where we plan to camp. We have a bit of a walk around the available pitches and choose slot 138 because it’s quite level and it’s got a great view over the water! Setting up camp doesn’t take long so we’re then free to wander for the rest of the afternoon. To our delight there’s heaps of Pelicans here surrounding some people that are cleaning and gutting some fish, no doubt they’re hoping for the leftovers! It’s pretty cool watching the pelicans flying, you wouldn’t think such a huge bird could hover so delicately but they can! It’s gone 2pm by this point and the little Tourist Information Shed is closed for the day so we head off for a walk around the town. We’re after a small heater and a wheat bag! Everyone warned us that it would get cold at night but we thought we’d be used to a bit of a chill having spent so many weekends freezing at the race track but the nights here really do get cold! With that done, yes in this tiny town we found both, we go off for a walk along the huge holiday park
which is pretty much deserted with the exception of about 20 of us out of 500+ pitches! The views are great looking out over the water and towards the ocean. We can see people fishing in the ocean but we can’t quite work out which way they’ve walked to get out there! Time’s going on so we’ll do that walk early in the morning and see what’s out there! Going through the park there’s plenty of bird life, bright coloured parrots are everywhere you turn and plenty of black swans with loads of other unidentified varieties! It’s a great place to just sit and chill out listening to the ocean and taking in the view. There’s a family of black swans down on the water and a couple of canoeists, we’re quite envious of them as we’d like to have a go at that sometime soon. We carry on walking through the park and get nearly to the edge when the shout goes out from Darryl “Struth Sheila, there’s a couple of Roos over there!!” Ok, so maybe he didn’t say that but there, minding their own business were our first wild Kangaroos of the trip. They just stood there
looking at us looking at them, who would move first?! Shockingly we’d got Kangaroo Rump for tea, surely we couldn’t eat that now that we’d found such beautiful creatures living in the same holiday park as us? Darryl said that on the packaging it was written that it was “Good for you and good for the environment” but surely it’s not good for the Kangaroo?! He followed that up with a shrug and that it was survival of the fittest and off he went to light the BBQ!
Although we’ve got the kitchen in the caravan and everything works perfectly, we’re quite curious people watchers and it’s nice to mingle with other campers so we go off to the camp kitchen for our feast. It’s the off season so it’s very quiet but there is another family in there; Nan, Gramps and their 4 year old grand-daughter Isabelle who is as bright as a button with the vocabulary of a 10 year old! She’s really funny but what makes me laugh out loud is that she’s picked up so many of her Nan’s mannerisms! They live in Port Albert, back along the coast towards Melbourne, and are ex-pats that
have been out here about 10 years. When they made the move to come it was with all their children but only 2 of them made the journey in the end, the others still live in England and one of them is a teacher in Hartcliffe but she lives in a castle! I’ve still not made any sense of that! You see, the camp kitchen is the place to be. We bid the lovely family a good night and maybe we’ll see them again tomorrow. It gets dark really early so by the time we’ve eaten dinner the last of the natural light has gone. We wash up and head off back to the caravan to settle in for the night dreaming of Kangaroos and Pelicans!
PS, Darryl has just come back from the loo and says he can hear rustling in the bushes!! Kangaroos are not far away!!
Dar & Sar
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Jan Kettle
non-member comment
I think that this bird is a pied cormorant
but I need to check this out - did you take the bird book with you? Love Mum K