Wet and dry

After all the stresses of the last couple of weeks we’re finally on our way.  Both of us are so wound up you can almost hear the twanging.  First stop after three hundred metres is to stop at the local garage and fill to the brim with diesel.  Then it’s a short run to the Pacific Highway and due south.  

After a couple of hours we’ve settled somewhat and pull in to the Byron Bay Cookie shop so that Kim can stock up on essential supplies.  The place seems to have gone downhill and so instead of having a coffee as planned, we carry on into Byron Bay and find a very pleasant little rustic cafe overlooking the beach for the rather late morning caffeine top up.  

We follow the coast road through Lennox Head and Ballina, stopping off a couple of times to admire the surf rolling in.  After the rains, the countryside is looking green, very European, other than the trees are almost all eucalypts and the crops in the fields mainly sugar cane.

Back on the Pacific Highway, now happily reduced from four lanes of maniacs to a single lane with periodic passing places, we decide that there’s no point in rushing things, so drop into the coastal town of Yamba and set up camp in the tourist park.  Must make a mental note to try and find cheaper camp sites.  $27 for a patch of ground and a shower is too pricy.  

Yamba has a small fishing fleet and we dine on freshly caught and cooked local prawns and fresh bread and butter, washed down with a glass or two of a NZ sauvignon from the fridge.  We may be camping but we try to do it in style.  

We’d just finished washing up when we were invaded by swarms of voracious mosquitoes.  Even the special spray we have wouldn’t keep the things way, so we took refuge in the tent and read for a while. 

It was a hot and airless night.  On advantage of a roof top tent is, being two metres up in the air, if there’s any breeze about and with the window flaps open, it’ll find its way in.  Sleep soon overcame us and we were soon in the land of nod, even though it was only about eight thirty!

Four o’clock in the morning and the heavens opened.  We sort of woke up but we’d heard the drumming of rain on the tent before (we always seem to find rain) and so we slept on, not rousing until nearly eight in the morning when the sun peeked through the clouds.  Breakfast over and it rained again, just as we were packing up, so the tent was put away wet.  No problems, we’ll dry it out tonight.

We did find a new use for the waffle boards carried on the side of Vin Rouge.  These are intended to get us out of mud and sand, and to bridge ditches, but we found they made ideal duck boards on the wet, sandy ground.  Good result that.

Setting off, we stopped off at a supermarket to purchase those things that Kim decided were essential that Mike didn’t (salad mostly!) then on through the very small town of Augourie to view the Wooloweyah Lagoon, a large, shallow, inland lake that somehow must be connected to the sea because it’s tidal.  Well, one stretch of water looks much like another and so it was back to the Pacific Highway an on to Coffs Harbour.  It’s a busy place that’s filled with motels so we made a beeline to the marina and took a short walk over the breakwater to Mutton Bird Island.  The island is named after the shearwaters that migrate annually to nest there, digging out shallow holes in the damp sandy soil in which to lay their eggs.  Apparently shearwaters taste similar to mutton, hence the name.

As the afternoon sun was dropping lower on to the horizon, we drove a short way out of town to a nowhere place called Sawtell as we thought it would be cheaper to camp there.  Wrong.  Tonight it’s costing us $30.   Let's hope it doesn't rain.