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Ahhh. Nice dry everything and a place to make coffee and breakfast. We got packed up and on the road a little bit earlier today than our normal start of 9, and 110+ km (70+ miles) and 3000′ of climbing ahead of us today and it was going to be a hot one. We added a little tour of Forster on the way out of town and were treated to a pretty nice trail and wide shoulders for the first part of the morning as we went through Forster’s sister city of Tuncurry.
We made a short stop in Taree for a Coke break and did some re-routing taking back roads to avoid a stretch of highway that was coming up. Added a mile or so, but the roads were very quiet and “mostly flat” as Google Maps says.
We had a reservation at a campground in Bonny Hills and got there about 5. We signed in and went to our site. What a site! This was predominantly a caravan park and we had one of the two tent sites. Ours was right by the dumpsters and that wasn’t it’s only salient feature. It was artificial grass — basically paved with the stuff, and hard, too. Dana wasn’t having any of it and went to the office to see if there was anywhere else (with real grass) where we could camp, following her dad’s tenet that “It never hurts to ask.” Before she came back, a maintenance guy showed up and apologized for the smell, explaining that the dumpsters were emptied and washed every Monday but sometimes they would become odiferous before then. I had no idea at the time what prompted this exchange, but nodded my head and agreed that it was pretty rank, even though I really didn’t notice any bad odors. I guessed that he had got a radio message to check it out.
He left, Dana returned, and announced that they had apologized profusely for the stink and moved us to one of their other camping spots that had a little shed with a sink, toilet, and shower. We were overjoyed as it was much nicer than the dumpster spot and saved traipsing to the common bath area. Turns out that other campers had complained about the dumpster odor and before Dana even asked to be moved, they were proactively moving us. Score!
Now, though, I had the task of putting up the tent on what was still an artificial surface. I couldn’t get a stake through the grass, let alone into the gravel that was under it. There was a bit of a gravel driveway and I moved the tent there hoping to anchor it at least on one side. Our neighbor was in a big caravan and came to the rescue, probably because our tent would be only a couple of feet from their camper. He lent me his drill with a socket and very long “stakes” that were more like industrial lag bolts, about 10″ (I’m sorry, 30cm) long with a very wide thread. Certainly something a backpacker or touring cyclist would never lug around, and something we never had seen nor had a need for before. However, they got us back on the fake grass plot and the tent was up and ready.
We changed to our swimming suits and headed to the beach to catch the rest of the sun. It was still staying light until after 8 pm and the beach was beautiful, living up to the town’s name. We were intrigued by patterns of small balls of sand on the beach and found that there were little crabs burrowing and they would literally toss a ball of sand away from their new abode. Interesting in that all this work would be undone when the tide came in, but that did not stop their effort. Check out the pics in the gallery of patterns these artful crabs make.
On the beach, we met a local, Ruth, who gave us a lot of tips about the town and much of her own history.
We went back to camp, made a visit to the store Ruth recommended, took showers, then walked to the Bonny Hills Beach Hotel where she said there would be food and music. The music was over by the time we got there, but the food was excellent, as were the beer and wine. And we didn’t run into any possums on the dark walk back to camp!
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