A damp drive home.

So the last day dawned.  Sort of: the cloud and drizzle were so pervasive it might have been better had it stayed dark!

 We packed up and tidied the house and took off just after 9.  It was raining more or less all the time, and with the road to Genoa being rather wet and twisty I moved very moderately.  This also averted a visit from Chunderpooch.  We paused briefly in Eden to acquire some smoked fish from an excellent purveyor of same and had a quick look in the port for any seals.  As usual, there were none we could see,

On to Merimbula, our first addition to the NSW Towns project for this trip.  It was interesting that when I asked if there was a War memorial in the town I was told no, but there is an RSL one.  It seems that to some people 'proper' War Memorials must be administered by the State or Local Government.  I disagree, and rated this an excellent specimen.

 The diggers commemorated also have a nice view out over the harbour and oyster leases.  (An oysterperson was trying to decide whether to engage in some toil or if the colour of the sky suggested alternative employment - possibly involving a warm pub - was better!)

We tend to find Merimbula a somewhat artificial place in that it is mainly a tourist town like Bateman's Bay, rather than a proper town like Bega or Moruya.  Most of this housing is multiple dwelling stuff, primarly aimed at visitors.

 We drove on through the soggy, coming to Tathra which had a somewhat more modest memorial.

 We drove down to the wharf where the sea was very rough

 which had the great benefit of bringing some seabirds close in.  Unfortunately I don't know seabirds at all well but I think we saw a couple of White-chinned Petrels and some Fairy Prions.  They seem to fit for timing and behaviour.  Gannets were al;so close in and we saw a Great Cormorant swallow a very large fish!

The final town was Bega.  Despite having been there many many times when we owned a weekender (cottage or bach for those in other colonies or former colonies) I didn't know where the War Memorial was. I thought the area around the show grounds might prove fruitful.  The first thin seen there was a mural on the swimming pool.

 Nearby was the Boer War Memorial!

Having ticked that off we headed down the main street, in the car, it being too wet and rainy to walk anywhere.  I commented t Frances that I had always thought of Bega as having a very modern and tacky main drag, but as a result of our project I now tend to look above the modern hoardings and often spot some rather interesting designs.

As we left we suddenly spotted this huge memorial.  That would undoubtedly keep the people in merimbula happy!

So we headed off to home.  Frances suggested we try to guess the coldest temperature that would be recorded on the way home.  I won with a guess of +5C which occurred at the top of Brown Mountain.  The drive up the mountain was in cloud and rain but next to no traffic on our side of the road.  Heading down was a parade of big trucks which would have made a very slow trip.  Nimmitabel was again 6C, where the thermometer stayed pretty much until we got home, where it was as shown in his image +7C.

The main reason for the image of the information display is the graph of fuel consumption.  Note the big dip in the middle where we came up the mountain.  The lesser dip at the end was due to appalling traffic in Queanbeyan (for no reason that we could establish, but we wondered about people picking up kids from school and the rain interacting).

That's all folks: I get back to where I started: I love Mallacoota

Links to all pages

Drive down

Mallacoota and Bastion Point

Shipwreck Creek

Firewood time

Beaches and Bush

Drive home in the rain.