Days 15 - 28

NIGHTS   15, 16, 17, 18 - DELICATE NOBBY, GOOLAWAH BEACH.

At the end of the last entry I was raving about Delicate Nobby.  It’s been almost two weeks since we were there and the lustre has yet to dull.  It still stands as a brilliant place to ignore time.

 We ended up staying four nights.  When we left we had the capability to have stayed longer.  There was LP gas still in the bottle and the sun had done its bit by continually recharging the power we had used overnight. Leaving was due to the onset of Easter.

 

Apparently Delicate Nobby is an extremely popular destination for the Easter break.  Some of the campers already there were an advance party, setting up tents and marking out spaces for family and friends who hadn’t arrived yet.  They tell of Easters past and the issues that come with overcrowding.  With no delineated spaces, it can become uncomfortably tense.  Arguments are common as new arrivals try to crib space from established camps. People take sides.  It didn’t sound like fun to us and we didn’t want to taint our memories.  

 

 

Leaving was sad, which sounds ridiculous given that we’d only been there four days, but we had gotten to know several groups of campers and settled into an easy routine.  For example, early evening saw two small boys cycle past us on their bikes.  We soon learned that showering time was near and they’d plotted an escape.  But they always stopped to pat Morrissey on the way.  Shana and I would talk to them and, using all of our sophisticated adult guile, try to keep them from venturing further until the mum or dad arrived to collect them.  As they were reluctantly led away it was always with our promise that they could see Morrissey in the morning.  They were very cute and usually covered in sand, food and dirt.  Another example is the guy I had befriended who was in a tent next to us, Bobby. I talked to him every afternoon.  Bobby was a fishing champion (it said so embroided on his t-shirt) who was gone all day, leaving about five in the morning.  He went rock fishing off the headland and showed me pictures of the fish he had caught during the day.  He was catching tuna and mackerel as big as he was (bigger than me) and gave us a large slab of tuna (which we greedily accepted and quickly ate).  He said he had about 10 kilos of it in his esky.  He invited me to go fishing with him.  He was going to give me some hands-on tips.  As much as I needed those tips, we sadly moved on, and so as a fisherman I continue to exist mainly as untapped potential.   I give this place five stars out of five.  This score is totally unrealistic but I don’t care.  If you have any passion for camping or fishing or outdoor fun then go there. Really.

 

THE EFFECTS OF EASTER ON THE TRAVELLING CIRCUS

Easter on the road is a pain in the butt.  It is one of the busiest times for tourism.  To celebrate this caravan parks raise their rates and impose strict new sanctions.  Parks that a day before charged thirty dollars a night and gladly catered for dogs now charge fifty dollars and consider the domestic dog the fiercest of all predators, roaming in ravenous packs, seeking only to savage  small helpless children. Dogs are no longer welcome in their park thank you very much (or not until after Easter anyway). 

 

To us Easter meant no more than the continuation of a need to find places to spend the night.  (We can have chocolate eggs any week of the year if we want - with or without a toy inside).  But, thanks to Jesus ascending to the heavens, the coast became too complicated and too expensive for us and so we needed to head inland.

 

NIGHTS  19, 20 & 21 – BELLINGEN SHOWGROUNDS

Shana and I rang Bellingen Showgrounds to book in advance.  This amused Rhonda, who answered the phone.

“You don’t have to book” she said.

“But it’s Easter” we said “what if it fills up?”

“It’s never happened yet” she laughed.  She informed us to drive up the back when we got there and that she would meet us sometime between 5 and 6 pm.  Park anywhere she said.  She’d bring with her a key to the amenities block.  She told us that Morrisssey was supposed to be kept on a leash but to not worry too much about it and use our discretion.  It sounded to us like Bellingen Showground was the ideal place to lay low over Easter.

 

 

When I was a younger, married man, I wanted to live in Bellingen.  Tia (wife), the kids and I sold our house in outer western Sydney and went looking for a property on the north coast of NSW.  We found Bellingen and it was perfect.  We looked at several properties over three trips up there and they were each ideal, but they were all too expensive.  We just didn’t have enough money to live in Bellingen itself. 

 

We ended up finding a place in Thora – 15 or so kilometres west of Bellingen.  It was a house beside the Bellinger River at the foot of the climb up the hill to Dorrigo. We wanted it and made an offer.  Then we waited.  I can’t remember why exactly, but we ended up waiting for a month or so before  being informed that the house had been sold to someone else.  I think we might have been gazumped.  We ended up buying 8 acres at Mt Burrill, between Nimbin and Murwillumbah.  Bellingen, however, always seemed like ‘the one that got away’.  Revisiting it always conjures mixed emotions.

Bellingen Showground is less than a kilometre from the centre of town.  It’s on the other side of the Bellinger River, across the low lying bridge that floods at least three times a year.  The river was still murky from the most recent floods although, if you looked down into it as you crossed the bridge, you could see large fish swimming and feeding in threes and fours.  Not knowing much about fresh water fish we asked Joel, the son of a friend who owns Bellingen Backpackers, what kind of fish they could be.  Probably catfish he said, but could be trout.  Trout are supposed to be tricky to catch as far as I know.  Shan and I reckoned that if we had a long handled net we could reach down into the river and scoop some out, although we never put this theory into practise.

 Bellingen the town is an exotic mix of the hippy and the greenie, the farmer and the foodie.  The town is proud of itself and it shows.  For every bare footed wastoid you meet you can meet three or four young entrepreneurial business people; café or restaurant owners who are competing against each other selling organically inspired meals and slow, crafted coffee.  There is a live music scene heavily skewed towards the earnest singer songwriter or the soft reggae protest song.  There’s the old clothes Emporium that sells all the quality and exclusive labels at prices dearer than David Jones.  Bellingen has converted many of it’s seldomly used but architecturally interesting buildings – a buttery, an old produce shed – into galleries housing painters and wood turners and sculptors. It has an annual writer’s festival that we just missed, not that we knew it was on.  It’s an easy place to wander around for a day or two although Morrissey would disagree.  He hated getting left outside all the time, tied to something he couldn’t pull loose.

 I must say though, Bellingen is damp this time of year.  It is lush and green and beautiful but a dew descends during the afternoon, coats everything during the night, and then just lazes around all the next day, waiting to be topped back up as a new evening approaches.  The long grass of the showground never became dry and bits of wet grass managed to get stuck to everything.  Not complaining – just saying is all.  Shana and I give this place 3 stars out of five. The grass was too long and soggy.  I thought we might have been bogged, which weighed on my mind all the time we were parked. We weren’t, which Shana reckoned she knew all along.  Also the bins didn’t get emptied often enough. One night they were covered with maggots that moved eerily (and disgustingly) in the light of my little battery operated headlamp.

 

NIGHT 22 – DANGAR FALLS LODGE, DORRIGO.

We thought that we were driving into someone’s driveway and parking behind their house.  It turned out, however, that what we thought was a house was actually a lodge – a house like shape containing a large open hall and kitchen area, used for meetings, etc .  Behind it was a terraced area with four power poles and various tent sites. There were two vans already set up, and two tents set away from each other. Toilets and showers were cut into the hillside, beneath the hall.  The whole thing was above Dangar Falls, which was about 500mtr away down a winding bush track.

 

 

 We were at Dorrigo on a waterfall quest, following The Waterfall Way.  We spent a pleasant afternoon doing the tourist thing – lunch at a café, a visit to the art and craft galleries, trawl the second hand bookshops, find and follow a suggested walking trail.  As we did so, we could hear an amplified voice being carried on the wind.  Enquiries lead us to Dorrigo Showground where men, women and children, most wearing denim jeans and ranging styles of akubra hat, sat confidently on horseback or perched like birds along the fence line.  A sign advertised the event as a ‘campdrafting’ competition. 

We didn’t know what ‘campdrafting’ was but we took a seat in a stand to wait and watch.  Eventually a single cow came storming into the arena with someone on horseback following it or chasing it or maybe trying to catch it.  It was a blast of action after a fairly long lull and very confusing. A whip was cracked somewhere off to the side, they guy on the horse slowed down and the cow continued running manically with no apparent plan in mind.  Eventually others on horseback ushered the cow out and everyone settled back to wait for the next flurry.  Also in the arena were four spindly saplings that seemed out of place.  Had someone thought it a great idea to plant four baby trees in the arena just before the whole area was about to be trampled by horses and cattle?  It seemed very odd to me.

 

As happens a lot Shana worked out what was going on.  The saplings had been planted as markers and the cowfolk on horseback had to chase, steer and cajole the cows around and through these markers following a predetermined course.  Each competitor was timed.  A whip was cracked as they crossed the finish line. The quickest time was obviously the best.  Mystery solved.

 

Once we knew what was going on it became less fun.  We had more laughs speculating on what was happening and creating ridiculous stories about the contestants and what they were attempting.  We continued watching for a while, becoming experts immediately, and then lost interest, moseying on back to town. 

 

Dangar Falls is 2 kilometres north of the cenotaph in the middle of Dorrigo.  I’d been to Dangar Falls before and knew what was there.  Tomorrow was my birthday and I liked the idea of swimming in the deep pool at the bottom of the falls as a birthday dare/treat.  Of course, that involved Shana as well.

 

 

Happy Birthday to me.  The morning rose grey and chilly but Shana and I remained determined to follow the plan.  It was about 8am when we reached the bottom of the falls and there was nobody else around.  But, true fact, as we reached the bottom the sun came out, shining like a spotlight between the trees and creating rainbows in the spray of the falling water.  We stripped down to our swimmers, waded over the rocky bottom to hip depth, counted to three together and, holding hands, dove in.  JAYSUS!!!  It was bloody cold.

 

We splashed about for a few moments, neither of us game to swim across the pool to where the falling water was landing.  Morrissey proved to be perhaps the smartest of us all, refusing to enter the water no matter how much we tried to attract him.  We took turns alternating between taking photos of each other and shivering.  It was how I hoped it would be though; it made us feel great, fantastic, alive.  I yodelled a primal scream or two to the sky it felt that good.

 

Maybe they were drawn to the screams, but very soon after two men and two women appeared on the timber walkway halfway along the path.  They approached as we dried off and got dressed.  We told them that the water was warm but our blue lips gave us away.  We couldn’t convince them to jump in.  Then, true fact again, as we started to head back along the path, clouds covered the sun.  The spotlight vanished and the rainbows disappeared.  I think we can reasonably conclude then that Jesus’ dad, somewhat like a heavenly flasher, only uncovers his delights for the courageous and/or the stupid.  Shana and I give this place 2 ½ stars out of five. We figure that’s half. There weren’t really any flat sites for the ‘bago and both showers were in the same room but made using clear glass screens. Showering next to an unknown person wouldn’t have left much unknown for long.

 

 

 

NIGHT  23 – BELLINGEN SHOWGROUND.

Back in Bellingen, although it wasn’t our original plan.

 

We intended following The Waterfall Way as there is something we find attractive and romantic about waterfalls. I’m not sure why because, really, with these waterfalls anyway, it is just a few largeish creeks that continually throw themselves over rock ledges of various heights.  Seen from above they are totally unremarkable.  There’s no great torrent of water or gnarly series of rapids concentrating the energy before unleashing it.  It’s a creek, a few scraggly eucalypts, maybe a cow,  and a rocky hillside. But something happens when seen from below.  Dangar Falls filled us with a reverence for nature, and a desire to kiss.

 Ebor Falls was further along, and then Wollombi Falls was beyond that.  It was all within 100 kilometres of where we were.  We could stay the night at Ebor, probably at the campground that was advertised as being behind the hotel/motel, have another swim, then do the same at Wollombi.  It would be sweet.

 Unfortunately the higher we climbed the more the weather closed in.  We made it to Ebor, having another meal in another quirky café, and then to Ebor Fall’s viewing platform.  There was little view other than shadowy forms made out behind a veil of soft, wet mist.  We could hear falling water, but couldn’t see jack.  We had a decision to make.

 We figured that the mist was unlikely to clear anytime soon.  That meant we could either hole up behind the Ebor Hotel/Motel or continue further to Wollombi or perhaps Armidale.  Now, not wanting to slag a place I’ve never really been to, but doing it anyway, Ebor motel looked scary in the gloom.  It may have been nice, or it may have housed lonely cowboys with a nervous twitch and a hankering for bringing city folk like us back down to earth.  Either way Shana said she’d rather not rely on having to use the motel toilet and bathroom and I lost any pretence of machismo by agreeing with her way too quickly.  It was off to Wollombi then.

 

 But wait.  Today was my birthday and so it was my whim day.  Today I could solely dictate the day’s progression.  I didn’t want to go to Armidale and Wollombi may have been worse than Ebor.  I wanted to go back to Bellingen, set back up in the showground, turn on the TV and watch the footy.  Penrith were playing after all.  I told Shan and she smiled a smile of a thousand agreements.  We drove back down the hill in the mist and the rain and Bellingen greeted us warmly (although still damp).  I watched the footy and we went and ate pizza for dinner.  See previous score.  Maybe add an extra ½ because it felt familiar and safe on my birthday.

 

NIGHT 24 – NORTH BEACH, MYLESTOM.

I blame Joel.  We were chatting with him at Bellingen Backpackers, which he is managing, and I asked him how he was going living away from the surf.  He told us he was thinking of relocating to Mylestom, a surfside suburb an easy drive away.  We needed one more night before Easter officially ended.  Following his logic we thought we might be able to sneak back to the coast.

 Wrong. 

 We got a site easily enough.  They were happy to accept Morrissey.  We were told to drive around the park, chose a site we liked.  There were heaps available as 48 groups had left throughout the morning.  The park was beautiful – new toilet blocks, level sites, well maintained.  We were to choose a site, set up camp, and then go back to the office.  It was all very casual.  Fix it all up after we’d set up.

 Shana returned as I was pegging down the mat.  Together we’d taken out the chairs and assembled them.  Wound the awning out.  Taken the tables and the Weber out of the storage bins.  She went to pay, leaving me to the finishing off.  She was shaking her head.  “Fifty Bucks” was all she said.

“What are you talking about” I answered dimly. 

“Tonight cost us fifty bucks” she said, “we didn’t check on the price”.

 She was right.  We hadn’t enquired how much it would cost.  According to the park owners, we were booking in during Easter.  Tomorrow the site would be $28.  We never budgeted to pay $50 for a night.  Ever.  Shana paid it though. We do that. What point would there be in complaining?  The conspiracy theorist within us recast the whole opening gambit though.  Was it bad luck, or bad management on our part?  Or was Helen, the park manageress, cleverer than us?  Was it a clever ploy on her part to have us set up first, knowing full well how unlikely it was that we would pack everything away again and go elsewhere?  Then she could charge what she liked.

 We got over it.  The beach was nice, although crap for surfing, and we had a lot of space to ourselves.  Shana and I give this place 1 star out of five. It should undoubtedly receive a higher score than that but we haven’t gotten over it at all.

 

A FREE PLUG, WELL DESERVED

Watson’s Caravans on the Pacific Highway at Coffs Harbour deserve all the custom they can get.  We really can’t rate them highly enough.  We wanted a new mattress.  The one we had was just foam and it didn’t offer the support a couple of greying nomads required.  We’d rung Watson’s early and they assured us that they had a suitable innerspring mattress in stock.  And, when we got there, THEY DID!

 Why I am making a bit of deal out of this is because, to us, it is unusual.  We have become used to dealing with Australian Motorhomes at Newcastle.  They will readily say they have something, but whether they do when you get there would be debatable, in our experience anyway.  We have little confidence in them.  Watson’s, on the other hand, supplied the mattress and helped us to install it.  They also sorted out a problem we were having with the sullage hose and refilled our gas bottles at a discounted rate.

 So, thank you Watson’s Caravans.  If you are in the Coffs area, and you need something caravan oriented, I recommend them.  Say that Alan and Shana sent you. (Of course, they’ll have no idea what you are talking about).

 NIGHT 25 – DIGGERS BEACH, COFFS HARBOUR.

I’ve never liked Coffs.  All my life I’ve talked disparagingly about it – I’m not really sure why.  Even as teenage westies on our bi-annual surfing safaris we skipped it.  Today I was pleasantly surprised by an area of Coffs Harbour that I never knew existed.

 It goes to show how knowledgeable we were as teenage westie surfers.  I’d never heard about Diggers Beach yet, according to the Coffs Harbour Visitors Guide, Diggers ‘is considered to be the (Coffs) premier surfing break’.  Admittedly, it doesn’t say who did the actual considering, or how long ago it was,  but it was this statement that drew us here.  I’d yet to chance upon any quality surf since the trip began. I don’t need the North Shore of Hawaii or even Kirra of Burleigh at their best, but I would like a break where the drop was a bit sketchy and you hung off the side of the face as you raced down the line.  Newcastle offers such conditions reasonably frequently.  I’ve seen nothing like it since we left.

 Diggers continued my disappointment.  It is a spectacularly beautiful little bay with an estuary at the north end and MacCauleys Headland to the south.  It has two pole constructed viewing platforms along the beach and a calm, quiet southern corner where you can swim in flat water.  It had a large crew of guys on mals but it didn’t have any surf.  That’s okay for mals, they are built like rafts and can be lifted along by the weakest of swells.  The boogers though, the bodyboards that I ride, being so much smaller and having a lot less floatation, require steeper faces and a lot more punch.  I paddled out and floundered around like a gumby.  Even while wearing paddle gloves getting onto a wave was a rare occurrence. 

 We were only really day camping but, while walking Moz, Shana found a place that was obviously used for overnight camping.  There were water taps, bbqs, picnic tables, and no signs nearby to warn us against staying there.  There were already two small hi-ace sized campers there and a big ‘bago similar to ours.  We motored on up and found a spot.  It wasn’t overly friendly but we weren’t necessarily seeking company. 

 

 We both only slept moderately well though.  We couldn’t really say whether this was due to the new innerspring mattress or because we always sleep less well when possibly freecamping illegally.  We are always concerned that we will be woken in the middle of the night and told to move along.    Shana and I give this place 2 ½  stars out of five. It had everything that we could want except the guarantee that it was legal.  We are such wussy do gooders.

 NIGHTS  26, 27 & 28 – LAKESIDE CARAVAN PARK, WOOLGOOLGA

It’s an early call I know but, here goes, we may just have stumbled across the best caravan park toilets in all of Australia.  They are brand spanking new and what a bloody difference that makes.  It’s not the freshness of new paint and new tiles and new taps etc.  This toilet has incorporated some clever design elements that I’ve never seen before.

 A good example is the corridor/entry that bridges the shower cubicle and the outer dressing area.  Rarely are the cubicles designed well enough to keep the dressing area dry and so your towel, your fresh clothes, your shoes, they all get wet.  Here they have two staggered panels on opposite walls.  No door or curtain.  These staggered panels efficiently stop the water.  Clever huh!  Similarly the toilet cubicles aren’t bricked in.  They are on screw legs that could be pulled down.  I don’t know why you’d want to pull them down but it lessens the cost and adds to ease of maintenance.  Plus, and this is a major excitement in my camping life, they have a Dyson blade hand dryers.  I love Dyson blade hand dryers.  Sometimes I go in and put my hand under the sink for no reason except it allows me to dry them using the Dyson.

 All this modern technology does have a down side though. Keyed door locks are old technology.  Contemporary techno dunnies have numbered combination locks.  The logic is simple.  Remember the number, punch it in and go about your business.  No keys to get lost or accidentally taken home.  Except I can’t ever remember the code.  It is six numbers long and beyond me.  So every evening, after I get out of the shower, I write it on the palm of my hand like a schoolkid.

  I like the modern amenities but I don’t think toilets should be designed so as to make me feel stupid.

 

 Amenities block aside, Woolgoolga has provided three mostly wet and drab days.  The bad weather has allowed me to tootle away on the computer writing this blog but I’m not happy about it.  We have been spoilt up to this point.  Before Easter we’d had nothing but blue sky days.  As I write this I have not entered the surf or taken out the fishing rod.  Shana and I have swum in a wind protected lake every day with Morrissey and had fun doing so but the surf tantalises from 10 metres away, calling from just beyond the perimeter fence.  Shana and I give this place 4 stars out of five.  The amenities are spectacular but it’s not the caravan park right in Woolgoolga that we wanted. I don’t know why this park is being scored lower because the one in town doesn’t accept dogs, but there you go.  United they stand, together they fall.

 And so, one month has passed (well 28 days).  Cool.  Keep bringing it on.