TravellingStrom

I woke up and it was sort of sunny, a bit hazy and thinly overcast. I took my time about moving as I was still in 3 minds on which way to go. Alan from Cairns had invited me to sail on his new boat next week for a few days from Pittwater near Sydney, if I was in the area. That should be easy to sort out, it was the bits in between which are hard to do. I wanted to spend some time in Canberra, also drop in and say G’day to another Alan in Goulbourn, then another chap had invited me to Newcastle and of course Greg in Coffs Harbour.

Anyway, I eventually headed off in the general direction of east after taking a few pictures of this area. That shot is the actual entrance to the sea, it has long and wide wetlands on this side and it is a thriving fishing and tourist town.

Just before Nowa Nowa there is an old trestle bridge which is the largest still standing in the state. I went for a look up a 3km dirt road which was not real bad, it had a few loose corners, but I am getting either over confident or gaining competence as it was quite easy 🙂

The bridge was built in 1916 and is 20m high and nearly 250m long, quite impressive as they built it using the local trees that grew in that forest.

After that I kept on going east past Orbost and then stopped at the Cann River for fuel and bought some lunch for later. I had seen a few bikes on the road and here were heaps of them, I chatted with a new arrival and it turns out there is a rally this weekend in Thredbo to raise money for a charity. There will apparently be over 6000 bikes there, in fact I remembered hearing about this event ages ago, but as I was going to be who knows where, I could not book accommodation. There is not enough room up that way for that many people, so I decided to go my own way and do my own thing 🙂

I headed north and soon got amongst the twistys again, very nice, although I was a bit concerned about the Kenworth truck stunt drivers being on the same roads as me 🙂

Now, these I can handle 🙂

The road widened a bit and the bends were quite fast and smooth.

I turned off at a small dot on the map, but nothing on the ground place called Rockton and headed south, just for a few k’s until I came to White Rock picnic area where it seemed a nice quiet place to have some lunch, which I duly did.

While I was looking at the scenery a couple on a Suzuki 1400 turned up for the same reason, I went over for a chat, it seems as though they had found some unwelcome wildlife, it was in the suggestion box and looked like it could create a few problems, so I used a stick and put him back in a tree. It was not a huntsman like I am used to, they also did not know what it was, so if anyone can identify it, please let me know 🙂

And here are Bert and Lorraine, they are from Melbourne and had decided with the cup day, to take some time and get away from everything, as well as away from where the cops are hanging out, which would be Thredbo this weekend 🙂 Nice to chat with you guys.

Then it was enjoy the ride down the smaller road to the main highway and east to Eden where I got some tourist information. I decided to keep on riding up the coast through Merimbula, then Tathra. Here was where I decided to camp, but the price was a rip off and I hate being ripped off, so after an aborted attempt at the motor home park, she had told me the camp kitchen had everything, but it had a gas BBQ and nothing else, not even power points nor any sides to the structure?

It did have kangaroos and lots of sand, here you can see the mother roo and the black line below her hands is the tail of a Joey who got scared and jumped in as I arrived. The sites were all deep sand, nearly dropped the damm thing twice getting around.

I got a refund and headed to Bega, this was a waste of time, no caravan parks, so back to the coast I go and stopped at a small town called Kalaru and booked in there. It was still $20 but the kitchen had everything, even TV, so no worries there.

If I wanted I could get a courtesy bus to the pub about 6km away, but nah, had a feed and it started to rain, and has not stopped since, so a quiet night in the well covered kitchen, maybe watch a movie or two, hope the tent does not spring a leak, it has had a hard life on this trip 🙂

Day – 401km
Trip – 26,286k

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