Its been a long year so it was time for us to take some time off and hit the road in the spacious, speedy Barina. Its fair to say not a lot of planning went into this trip: leave approved, car serviced, cat minder in place, what more do you need? It was good timing too as Warwick had just found out he was successful in getting both his grants and managed to get a paper sumitted just in time.
So we packed our bathers, shorts and T-shirts and set off in the Barina with the mountain bikes on the back, heading east for the NSW coast. Our first stop was Lakes Entrance, which was more of a stop over, as we continued on along the Victorian coast and into NSW the next day. There was no sign indicating we'd crossed the border and the first we realised we had was the lack of TAC signs warning of the dangers of driving while tired:
So the initial plan was to stop in Merimbula, which neither of us had been to. And we spent about 10 min in Merimbula before deciding to continue up the coast (not impressed). Instead we stopped at the small seaside town of Tathra. Now there are definate advantages staying in smaller towns as you don't get all the crap associated with the more traditional tourist places (ie Lakes Entrance, Merimbula) plus we also saw an Echidna crossing the main street of town, a real highlight for me anyway (they are pretty funny trying to crawl up the curb). But I would not recommend staying in a small town like Tathra on a Monday night as you may find the only place open for a meal is the Pub and it might be the one week of the past 20 years that the kitchen is closed for remodeling and so you may end up at the General Store trying to select food that only requires hot water to be cooked. So while sitting in front of the tv slurping 2 min noodles we had both come to the same conclusion.....this was not the holiday we were after.
So we decided our initial plan was crap, jumped into the Barina and headed back down the coast. We'd previously passed through Lake Tyres and thought it would be a good place to stay so we hired a beach house there for a week.
Lake Tyres is far enough off the main track to be away from the tourists, only having a cafe and general store, but close enough to Lakes Entrance so we'd never be stranded for food. The beach house was great with ocean views and lots of birdlife in the backyard to keep us entertained, including galahs, rainbow lorikeets, rosellas, cockys, kookaburras and the occasional pelican flying by. While the water was way too cold for swimming we managed a few walks along the beach and even had a seal follow us along in the water one day, playing in the waves. We found a few bike tracks and quiet dirt roads to go riding on which meandered around the hills and ended up at various inlets of the lake.
Warwick walking along Lake Tyres beach (above) and checking out the water temp (below)
Some shots from our bike rides around Lake Tyres:
You see some interesting things in the country, including a pedal powered lawn mower
Apparently oil was first found in Australia at Lake Bunga (not far from Lake Tyres)
And one for the Sam's out there
