Berma gets gooey again

Frances was feeling beach deprived so we decided that as we had some free time in the agendae and the weather looked OK we'd head South East with the camper.  Quite a lot of roadworks on the way down but no biggie,

We stopped after crossing the bridge at the end of Wallaga Lake.  This apparently features in a movie filmed by Angelina Jolie recently.  The linked article suggest this will have closed the bridge for 3-4 minutes for each take, which could have increased traffic on the road through Cobargo!

The reason for stopping was to look at the birds on the sandbanks.  This traditional flock of Royal Spoonbills also includes an Eastern Great Egret (the tall white one).

After parking the camper at Ocean Lake campground (on the Lake) we went for a walk on the beach.  I used a map from the campground to get us a scenic route (via Murren Point) to Camel Rock.  This took us past a lookout, complete with carved posts.

The view across the entrance to the Lake  to Mt Dromedary (politically correctly called Gulaga).

Shortly after this things got a bit messy, because the track shown on the map was a tad conceptual.  The problem was that it had been closed off to prevent damage to some Aboriginal Heritage stuff - no details were given but I suspect it was shell middens.  From our point of view this meant we followed a vague track across grassland (Tammy up to her guts in grass thatch) and swamp (Tammy up to her guts in water).  A pity she hadn't been given any Frontline because we were only going to walk on beaches.

We eventually got to the beach - as mentioned above that was the point of the exercise -  and walked on it.  This sign earned a big bouquet to Bega Valley Shire.

How nice to be somewhere that recognises the social value of dogs - unlike various other Shires in NSW that have come under the canophobic spell of the Sparks and Wildfires Service.

The wind was still surprisingly strong, as evidenced by the spume blowing off this breaker.

A few flowers.  Pimelea sp.

Acacia longifolia ss sophorae

A few words about the caravan park.  The greeting was very convivial and much thought was given to offering us a suitable site.  Basically lotsa brownie points.

What intrigued me was that although it is called a caravan park, a lot of it is now taken up with things that look more like houses.

One we saw advertised as being for sale mentioned 3 beds and 2 baths - with a garage under.  The place behind our site was more modest (as far as we could tell) and was for sale at $31K.  Presumably there was a fairly nifty site rental fee, but given that a decent caravan would cost about $50k that seems quite good value.

I don't know how Shires deal with places like this.  Very high density of dwellings, albeit with low occupancy except in mid-Summer, but they must have very difficult water. power and sewage situations.  However dealing with things like that is why Shire General Mangers get paid the salaries they do.

From our view the site was excellent.  Here are a couple of snaps as evening drew in.

It was probably helped by there being very few other folk around.  I suspect from November to March it is like one of the lower circles of the Inferno (but that goes down to the other guests, not the owners).