Wydon Crafts

4 – 13 APRIL

We sadly said goodbye to Mallacoota and our lovely new friends this morning and headed for the border and a town we’ve visited before, Eden.  We’d been told about a caravan park called The Garden of Eden by the owner of the Cavaliers, who recommended it highly.   So, after having a fishy  lunch down by the jetty and then doing a bit of shopping we headed a little bit out of town to the park.   And a very nice park it is too – part of the Top Tourist chain, the facilities are extremely good.   It has WiFi Internet and as we were going to be here for several days I decided to sign up for their 7-day package for $35, very reasonable when some parks charge $10 for just an hour.   The first two days it was fine and worked a treat.   The for some reason I couldn’t get online in the bus, so I took my laptop to the park office and asked if I could try there – no problem.   Back to Betty G – no access.   Tried all sorts of things, including the manager sawing off a couple of tree branches that he though might have been in the way of the booster signal from the office area.   Sometimes it would connect, sometimes it wouldn’t.   I reckon there was a problem somewhere, but apparently other people in the park were getting online OK.   Oh well, never mind, we’re leaving on Tuesday morning.   

Something really strange happened on Saturday.   We had parked in the main street and I was getting a bit of shopping.   Jeff was waiting in Betty G minding his own business when a big coach caught our bullbar.   No damage to us, but a dirty great deep scratch on the coach.   A gentleman walking by looked to see if we had suffered any damage, and spotted out IGKT sticker on the windscreen.   “Are you a member of the International Guild of Knot Tyers?”   And so we met IGKT member John, who lives very near Eden.    “Come into the bus and have a chat” says Jeff.   So there they are chatting about knots whilst I carry on with my shopping.   After a while John said that he’d better get going but arranged to visit us at the caravan park on Monday.   When I finished my shopping we headed off down to the jetty for Jeff to do some fishing – and who should turn up alongside Jeff but John with his family who were visiting for Easter.   Two of our neighbours in the park have expressed interest in knots so Jeff has already been giving lessons.

On Monday John and his wife Sue, paid us a visit and Jeff had a great knotting session with John.   Sue and I watched and chatted for the couple of hours of their visit.   It was really great to meet them – even if if was purely by chance.

14 APRIL

Well we’re still in Eden.    It absolutely chucked it down all night and at least until 11:30 this morning, so we decided to stay another day.   Apparently we had about 2” of rain last night – it was just a steady fall all night, but then in the morning it changed to a flippin’ great downpour.   A lot of people left this this morning, so I expect the roads would be pretty crowded with families going home after the Easter Holiday, and with the heavy rain we decided that we didn’t fancy being on the road today.   We needed to dry out a bit and Jeff wanted to deal with the one of two leaks we still have.   All down now, and we’re ready to move on.   Let’s hope we have a dry night.

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12 MARCH

Another nice little town to stroll through and a walk along the beach – good fish and chips too.

13 MARCH

Left San Remo for the drive along the Victorian Coast.   Thought about staying at Toorah Top Tourist Park, but when we got there it was nowhere near the sea so we carried on.   I checked on our map and saw a little place called Port Welshpool which was off the main highway and definitely right on the coast.    Very small caravan park, very small town, very nice pub.

14 MARCH

Jeff went fishing today but didn’t catch anything, neither did anyone else.   The wind came up during the evening – almost a gale.   Poor old Betty was rocking.   Then down came the rain, so heavy that we had leaks all over the place.   Didn’t get much sleep that night.

15 MARCH

Took our leave of Port Welshpool and headed on to Bairnsdale.   As we drove through Sale we spotted a market and stoped to have a look around.   As th weather wasn’t all that good some of the stallholders had statred to pack up, but there was still enough to see.   We were coming to the end of the market when I spotted a stall that had some rope, and it turned out that this was a guy who calles himself The Rope Bloke – just what Jeff has been looking for.   Finding a decent rope supplier has been very difficult over here and I think Jeff was despairing of ever find anything better than that available from hardware stores.   Well -       aka The Rope Bloke was just packing up his stall, but after chatting for a while said that he lived near Bairnsdale and we would be most welcome to visit him and his wife and have a look at the rest of his stock.   Having said that we would certainly be in touch before we left the area we carried on to Bairnsdale.   This is bigger than most places we’ve stayed in lately apart from Hobart and Melbourne, but very nice.   It all looked really clean and smart and well cared for.   The campsite was also good – the Mitchell Caravan Park, right on the Mitchell River.

16 MARCH

Yet another stroll around a new town – Jeff bought some stuff to seal Betty’s leaks.   Bairnsdale is really a rather nice town – very clean and well cared for.   It certainly seems as the residents take pride in their home.

17 MARCH

I did some carving while Jeff plugged up all the leaks he could find, including all around the windscreen – just in case.

18 MARCH

Another day exploring Bairnsdale – and I did some washing – fun!!!!   And a bit more carving.

19 MARCH

Decided to move on to Lakes Entrance today, but first we phoned        The Rope Bloke and arranged to call in before we left the area.   He had a really good stock of rope of all different sizes, types and colours, and Jeff bought enough to last him for quite a while.   We then carried on the Lakes Entrance and stayed at the Waterside Caravan Park.

20 MARCH

Did our usual walk through town, starting off along the waters edge.   Did a bit of shopping for supplies, had a wicked icecream at an icecream parlour and returned to Betty G.

21 MARCH

Decided to move camp today and went to the Eastern Beach Caravan Park on the outskirts of Lakes Entrance.   A very open spacious park – Waterside was a bit cramped.     Very hot, but Jeff insisted on going for a long walk right back to the other side of the town about 9K round trip.   Unfortunately he paid for it that night – he was fine until he went to bed then he started shivering even though it was still quite warm.   He said that he felt OK apart from the shivering.   I didn’t really know what to do and was very tempted to get a doctor, but after a while he settled down and went to sleep.  He was fine the following morning – no aftereffects.   Really weird – and he’s been OK ever since.

22 MARCH

Had a very quiet day beside Betty G today, just in case Jeff showed any more symptoms of whatever it was that caused last night’s problem.  

23 MARCH – 3 APRIL

Left Lakes Entrance this morning.   I’d had a look at our map and thought that the town of Mallacoota looked rather interesting.   It was alongside a large inlet (or so I thought) and it looked as if it could be sommat a bit special.   So we decided to make it our next overnight stop even though it meant extra 25K there and back to the main highway.   As we drove along the Princes Highway between Cann River and Genoa (where we had to turn off) we saw roadsigns which read “WARNING – Smoke on the road”.   As we neared Genoa we could see a few bits of smoke curling up from behind a hill.   We reached Genoa and turned off to Mallacoota.   The road proved to be rather twisty and winding and I said to Jeff “You can turn round and we could just carry on to Eden if you like”.   “No, it’s OK, don’t worry, we’ll carry on and see what it’s like” he said.   I would have been quite happy to turn round – I’d had enough of these sorts of roads in Tassie!!!   Boy, were we glad he ignored me.   What a beautiful place, and to cap it all, one of the cheapest at $21 a night PLUS FREEEEEE internet.   What more could we ask.   We booked for 2 nights.   Had a Cavalier-fix too!!!!    Close by were a couple with two Cavaliers, a tri dog and a Blenheim bitch – absolute sweeties.

One problem with the free internet was that it didn’t reach the part of the park we’d been put in, so I had to carry my laptop down to the camp kitchen to get online.   In spite of this we decided to stay another couple of nights!!    Then we thought we’d like to stay a bit longer, but only if we could move closer to where we could get online in the bus.   No problem” said Peter, the Park Manager and you’ll even get a nice view.   Well, the site he put us on couldn’t have been better.   Just a few yards from the water’s edge and right near the camp kitchen, so we could both get online whenever we wanted to.   By this time we had decided we wanted to stay even longer and extended our stay until 4 April – we even though of staying until after Easter, but all the powered sites where fully booked so that was that.

Next to us were Wolfie (Wolfgang) and his wife Gisela.   They made us most welcome and a couple of times in the following days, took us out on the lakes in their boat for BBQs at two of the many BBQ areas dotted about the shores of the lakes.   Another couple, Ian and Kerri, took us out for a drive to Shipwreck Bay along bush tracks – great drive and looked at some lovely places along the way.    Jeff was playing around with some pieces of string and both Ian and Wolfie were fascinated, so Jeff ended up having a couple of knotting sessions with them.

These two couples contributed so much to what was one of the nicest stays during our whole trip.   We really have met some great people over the past few months, and we are so greatful for the wonderful memories we will take home with us.

Whilst we were here it was my birthday and Jeff said that we must go out for dinner to celebrate, especially as it was me 65^th – AAARRRGGGHHH – that’s bluddy OLD.    He said that it would also be nice to have the others along to say a little thankyou for their kindness, so he booked a table for 6 at the Mallacoota Golf Club.   They have a great arrangement where they send a minibus to the campsite to pick up anyone who has booked for dinner.    We duly arrived and had a very nice meal, and then …….. Wolfie had arranged for a cake with candles (only a couple LOL) and a staff member brought it to the table and they all started singing “Happy Birthday”.   Of course, the whole restaurant had to join in, didn’t they!!!   Oh dear, I just  wanted the ground to open up and swallow me.   It was really very sweet of them to do this, but I’m so not into that sort of thing.   Anyway, the cake was delicious (it was actually part of our dessert) and Wolfie and Gisela gave me a single rose and Ian and Kerri gave me a Mallacoota calender with some super photos of the area.   What a day!!!

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