I was so pleased to hear the birds this morning when
I woke; surely when one is surrounded by forest and there is an avian silence,
the world is in trouble? We had passed an uneventful night with only two more
parties joining us. Given the situation with the lack of sanitary arrangements,
it was just as well.
We headed off north again on the Princes Highway
soon covering the eight kilometres to Bodalla, a tiny settlement with only
about five hundred inhabitants. We did expect more of the place, having read about
the All Saints Anglican Church built between 1883 and 1901, and were keen to
see this and other old buildings. We were through the place before we realised,
catching a glimpse of the Bodalla Dairy Shed and the grey granite church, stained
with age, perched discretely in a clump of gums on a hill. Bodalla is a well-known
historical cheese making township, centre of another wonderful dairying area
and interestingly, Bodalla cheese is now a brand associated with Fonterra, the
New Zealand dairy co-operative company. Parking spots for large rigs had not
presented themselves in an obvious way and so we decided, yet again, to give it
all away.
We chose instead to detour to Tuross Head on the
coast, passing between the estuary lakes of the Tuross River and Coila Lake, the
latter sitting just metres from open sea, surely open to it during wild storms.
What a delightful settlement Tuross Heads is! Two thousand two hundred people
live on this peninsula and we would have supposed that they were all retired
folk until we passed thirty or so school children, all of a similar age, on a
fresh air outing, so one can only assume that there are also many hundreds of
child-rearing parents in the area.
We drove around and around admiring the homes and even
more, their fabulous views, before heading back to the main road. The route
continued much as it has all the way up this south east coast to date, the road
up and down alternatively passing through forest, National Park and farmland,
and after another sixteen kilometres, we arrived at Moruya, where we hoped to
set up camp at the Showgrounds. Here there were no caravans or likely campers
to be seen, nor any person who could shed light on the current situation. Truth
be told, the showgrounds were advertised in Camps 5, but not Camps 6 and it
would seem that yet another council had given way to the petulance of
commercial operators.
We made our way down to the town and called at the library
which doubles as the Information Centre. Alas, the librarian there, a lovely
woman, was not familiar with dishing out advice for tourists, but did her
best and directed us to a couple of caravan parks, the first out at Moruya
Heads where one can stay for $37 a night and the second she was unable to raise
by telephone. So we proceeded to find out in person, arriving at this park to
learn that the tariff was $30, however a 10% discount was available to CMCA
members, thus making it acceptable given the level of the tariffs up and down
this coast. We booked in for three nights, with provision for extending. We
spent some time chatting with the charming proprietors and by the time we left
the office to set ourselves up, were feeling very warm and fuzzy about matters,
despite the cost.
After lunch we walked back across the Moruya River
to the town, intending to visit the museum, however by the time we arrived, it
had been closed for nearly half an hour. Our schedule is unlikely to fit with
the restricted opening hours however there is much natural beauty in the area
to be enjoyed without burying ourselves too much in its past.
As we wandered up and down the streets, we paused to
look at the statues hewn from trees, appreciating the skill in their making if
not so much the finished product. We paused to read the interpretative panels
on the granite memorial stone and learned that blue granite was quarried from
the southern banks of the Moruya River for use in Sydney’s Martin Place Post
Office, the Bank of NSW and the statue of Captain Cook in Sydney’s Botanic
Gardens. A second quarry on the other side of the river provided stone for the
piers and pylons of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, employing two hundred and fifty
stonemasons between the years of 1925 to 1932.
The first European settlors arrived here in the 1820’s
and the gradually increasing population was given a huge boost when gold was
discovered west of Moruya in the Araluen
Valley in 1851, this becoming one of Australia’s richest gold fields (yet
another superlative). Farming has been the mainstay of the area throughout the
centuries and is now supplemented by the tourist dollar, from those coming to
fish and enjoy the many beaches and estuaries that litter this fabulous
coastline. The population today is just short of 4,000 and is home to the
Eurobodalla Shire Council.
About a week ago, I saw that Batemans Bay was
hosting the South Coast Caravan, Camping and Holiday Expo the weekend of 2nd to
4th November and mentioned it in passing to my husband who just
loves these shows. We did not think that we would realistically be able to
attend without rushing north and missing out on some of our planned stopovers. However
we are now only twenty five minutes away from Batemans Bay and so will travel
up there tomorrow, still retaining our base here. We can, after all, have our
cake and eat it too.
No comments:
Post a Comment