Nomading - Lakes Entrance and Eden - 26 March - 1 April 2022

Well here we are again, ready for our next adventure taking us to Cape York at the top of Australia. This intrigues me because we live at the bottom most point of our continent so just to say we have been to the top point and detailing our journey seems like a damn good idea. Our trip has been delayed a few times, once because I had to schedule an emergency dental appointment before leaving, then because we had our daughter and grandson living with us and they both came down with Covid, which meant we had to isolate for the required time and thirdly because we are expecting a new bed to be delivered while we are away so we had to rearranged all our furniture so that the bed could be set up in our bedroom. So thankfully we are finally on our way albeit both very exhausted. One night's rest should do both of us well and then we can be on our way up the east coast. We have chosen Lakes Entrance for our first night's stay and are currently at the Lakes Entrance Recreation and Camping Reserve which I think we would highly recommend. If you are early enough you can book a riverside site but unfortunately by the time we arrived there were so many vans here and we had to choose a site away from the river. That is ok, we consider the site we have to be very convenient, we have lovely neighbours and are looking forward to the next couple of days. We didn't arrive until 2.30pm so by the time we set up it was 3.00pm, I was surprised how I had forgotten where things were kept in the van but I am sure that will sort itself out in the next day or two. No photos today but tomorrow we will explore the area and hopefully I will have something to show you, we love Lakes Entrance, there is a lot to do and much to see.

We woke up this morning refreshed and ready to start looking around. Our first stop was the Lakes Entrance Boatshed for a coffee and read, we know we can always get a good coffee here, ambiance is perfect and the service is always great and today didn't disappoint, highly recommended if you are in the area. We drove just down the road from here to pick up grocery items we needed from Aldi before driving out of town to the lookout over the Gippsland lakes and the town of Lakes Entrance. We stop here every time we are at Lakes, we have travelled a bit and have to say this is still one of our all time favourite vistas. I took the same photos I have taken many times before but I am always enraptured by the beautiful views, I can't imagine ever getting bored by them. From here we drove down to Bullock Island where there are extensive works happening, I think this is going to be developed into a tourist attraction judging from the advertising photos on display but at the moment it is just a very pretty island with a track of water leading out through the heads to the ocean beyond. We parked and walked down Reeves landing where there were quite a few people fishing, we sat and started a conversation with a gentleman who was rod fishing and also throwing out crab baskets to see what he could get. He hadn't had much success with the rod but he had a few crabs he had dragged up but he wasn't too hopeful for the rest of the day because the water was too dirty. We left here and then parked on the main street of Lakes Entrance. We crossed the road and walked along the water's edge to the end and then walked down the main street looking at the shops. Lakes Entrance had suffered through Covid but it looked like they were making a real effort to get back to it's former glory. There is no denying that this is a very picturesque town and with the number of people here at the moment we hope that the businesses here can recover and remain viable.

Up the next day and on our way to Eden, we have chosen to stay at the Discovery Park at Boydtown which is 12 minutes outside of Eden. The park is on Quarantine Bay and we have a site beside the beach, we haven't seen the beach yet but we will wander over tomorrow morning before driving to Merimbula, we are looking forward to having the surf serenade us tonight though. When we were set up and had lunch we drove into the Information Centre in Eden to pick up tourist information to maximise our time here. The Information Centre is just newly built and quite flash, we came away with a handful of maps and information. We drove up to the Eden lookout before heading off home, I took a few photos before we were back in the car driving back to Boydtown.

We thought we would take a drive into Merimbula today but first of all we walked over the beach at our caravan park that is just behind where we are camped. It is only a couple of years since we have been to Merimbula and not much has changed in that time. We drove up to Bar Beach and spent a bit of time here enjoying the view over to Merimbula main beach and had a lovely conversation with a couple of ladies out walking their dogs. We drove down to the main street from here and Robb wanted a new pair of Crocs so we parked and walked over to the shop where he bought his last pair and luckily we managed to find a pair identical to the ones he had, he was a very happy boy and I was tolerant of his choices. We visited another couple of shops on the main street and took care of a few things that needed taking care of and then we were back in the car driving to Quarantine Bay where we took a quick visit to the boat launching ramp. From here we drove to the Seahorse Inn at Boydtown which was an enterprise by a Scottish man Ben Boyd but unfortunately it was a bit of a failure but the Inn is still here and is a very popular attraction. We returned to camp from here so that I could hang out the washing I needed to do and also to plan our next few weeks, mainly because we need to book somewhere for Easter and we didn't want to leave it until the last moment. As it was I made a few calls and enquiries online before we finally found somewhere to book into. We have now set up a schedule from now until after Easter, once we are through Easter we should be ok for the remainder of our travels.

We had the strangest day today, I had planned for us to visit a few natural and historical sites in the Ben Boyd National Park, unfortunately the first couple of sites were out of our reach because of damage to the area with the recent excessive rainfall. We decided to drive into Merimbula again in search of the aquarium/restaurant and wharf which we eventually found and had a bit of a look around. There wasn't much else we wanted to see in Merimbula so we headed back to Eden deciding to stop in Pambula at the mouth of the Pambula River, we had visited here last time we were in the area with our son and his family and thought it might be nice to revisit this spot. We had a bit of a problem finding the beach but then asked a workman who stopped beside us and finally with his help found our way. We walked down to the beach area and had a bit of a walk around before returning to the car. This is a spectacular area and perfect for a family with young children to spend a bit of time, if we had more time we would have set up here and dipped into the water. From here we thought we would visit a couple of the historic buildings in Eden so we loaded up the Eden Court House into the GPS and headed off back to Eden. We easily found the courthouse and had a bit of a look around before visiting other historic sites including the cemetery and the Mary McKillop Centre. Our last stop for the day was Eden Wharf which we had visited previously but is always worth a visit. They are doing the area up in preparation to have cruise ships docking here so there are lots of changes from last time we visited. There was one fishing boat unloading their cargo so we stood and watched them for awhile, the fish go to the Sydney markets and apparently they had been out fishing for two days to get their haul.

We had an interesting day today, we had planned to visit four or five historic sites around Eden but we found like we had in other areas we wanted to visit in East Gippsland that they have been impacted by the recent rains and lots of roads that would previously be ok to drive along had been seriously damaged, there was also an issue with trees falling across the roads because the roots had been compromised with the amount of water in the area. Before we took off today we loaded up five destinations so that if we couldn't access one we could move onto the other. Our first destination was Green Cape Lighthouse where we could look across Bittangbee Bay but unfortunately after driving 15kms along a gravel road not in good condition we were faced with driving another 10 kms along a very sloshy/slippery road. We felt we had already put our car through a lot of punishment after slipping around a couple of bends and getting caught in mudslides we decided to turn around and move onto our next destination. We headed back and then when we came to the turn off for Bittangabee Ruins the road was blocked of as was the road to Boyd's Tower. The only place we had any luck was the turn off to Davidson Whaling Station, unfortunately there is a caretaker living at the station and it is made clear not to enter the yards. We had a quick look around this beautiful property before running back to the car when the rain started again. We have planned to have lunch today at Seahorse Inn and we had run out of places to visit so thought we would drive straight there. We parked and walked into the hotel and after being seated I ordered a wine for the two of us so that we could sip on this and look over the menu. Robb chose something from the regular menu and I chose something from the specials. We both really loved our meals and are happy enough to recommend this restaurant to everyone in the area. From here we returned to the van, the weather had turned badly and we decided just to spend the remainder of the day at home.