Day 6: Bulli Beach > Batemans Bay > Bega

Today’s post is brought to you by the letter ”B”, in case you hadn’t figured that out already.

I’m also concerned that I’m a bit light on for blog fodder today, so this could be short, or I could ramble. One of those options probably wouldn’t be a bad thing, BTW.

You may recall that yesterday I spoke about the upper shower block at the Bulli Beach Tourist Park. Water saver heads, flick mixer taps, getting probed in places you don’t want to be probed. So last night I did a further recon of the morgue lower shower block, just to confirm my options.

The lower shower block has even worse, smaller water saver heads, although it does have both a hot and cold tap, neither of which is located in a position that could discomfort.

So on the balance of things, I decided that I was no better or worse off at either shower block, and rather than make a decision about where to shower, I just showered at the van.

Showering in the van has both benefits and disbenefits. A “disbenefit”, for those of you that don’t recognise the word, is a “disadvantage or a loss resulting from something”. I like to think that this blog is both entertaining and informative.

The disbenefit of showering in the van is that you cannot stand in the shower and have a nice long 30 minute shower. Well technically you can, but the water runs cold after the first 5 of those minutes and then it gets very cold and unpleasant.

The benefit of showering in the van is that if you have that horrible realisation that you have forgotten a vital piece of clothing, you can leave the shower, walk through the kitchen, past the lounge/dining room and into the master bedroom, and back, and only add about 6 steps to your daily step count.

This morning at the unreasonably early time of about 7.00am, not long after I’d woken, there was this awful noise coming from the neighbouring property. It sounded like a whipper-snipper being tortured.

The first thing I thought was ”that guy is making enough noise to wake the dead … and then I realised … he was mowing the cemetery next door … and I thought to myself … gosh, I hope not 🙁

Yesterday we got to watch everyone else packing their stuff down in the rain to go home after the long weekend. Today it was our turn, except we are not going home … well, not yet anyway.

Everything packed and stowed and locked and connected, and we pulled out of the Bulli Beach Tourist Park at 9.01am.

We unfortunately did further grievous damage to the beautiful lawns at the BBTP, but there is not much I can do about that I am afraid.

I got a bit of a fright this morning. We set the GPS for Bega and this refined older gentleman said something like ”I’d be delighted if you would consider turning left at the next street, in 300m”. Who the heck was that? He sounded like he should have been serving tea and crumpets for the Queen.

And then I remembered. Karen, gone. Brandon, here now. I’d forgotten all about Brandon.

Once again I feel the need to say that the NSW motorway system is excellent. It is just as good at the USA’s Interstates, and far better than anything Queensland has. Long entry and exit lanes allowing traffic to merge safely, smooth and fast dual carriage ways, little if any traffic jams, fast flowing traffic.

At about 10.30am we stopped at the side of the road for a coffee and stretch. My phone tells me we were at Tullarwalla, but I can neither confirm nor reject that suggestion. That’s just the geo-tagging details that my phone recorded against the pictures.

It was a bit of a wild goose chase just trying to find a rest area that actually existed and was safe to stop. But that’s a whole other story for another day when I’m really short on content.

Now, where was I? Fast smooth roads, entry/exit lanes, like the Interstate … and then we hit Nowra.

Not unexpectedly, we had to run out of beautiful motorway at some point and end up on narrow two-way roads, but what surprised me was just how bad the roads became. Potholes, corrugations, poor patching, broken bitumen, sunken areas … it was awful. You find yourself constantly swerving to avoid big holes in the road, or worse – risking shredding a tyre or two.

Swerving to avoid potholes is not a great deal of fun on narrow roads, particularly when you see whites of the eyes of the drivers of oncoming vehicles, wide with alarm because there is a car and caravan taking over half their side of the road.

When you add to that the usual assortment of maniacs, psychopaths, kamikaze pilots, and trucks that sit just a couple of metres behind your back bumper, and it was a pretty exhausting trip.

We stopped for a quick lunch in Batemans Bay at about 1.00pm and decided that we would make it quick and keep rolling towards Bega.

Batemans Bay is a pretty little spot, and certainly one that we would like to come back and spend more time some day.

We kept rolling through constantly changing countryside until we reached Central Tilba.

Now, if you are not a fan of River Cottage on the telly, you might as well jump over this bit as it will be meaningless to you.

MBW is a big fan of Paul from River Cottage, and all of the stuff he does in the local community at Central Tilba … and by an incredible coincidence Central Tilba is on the way from Batemans Bay to Bega.

So we took the turnoff.

As you can see from the photo above, the roads are quite narrow. And windy. And steep in places. Narrow, windy, steep. Not a great trifecta.

We drove into Central Tilba and MBW spotted the parking area, and pointed to the right and said ”quick, turn here!”

It was possibly more like ”QUICK! TURN HERE!” but I can’t be sure so I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt.

Now I just want to quickly explain something about Newton’s first law of motion: the law of inertia.

Specifically it says that ”… an object moving at a constant speed and in a straight line (like a caravan) … will remain moving at a constant speed and in a straight line unless it is acted upon by a force …”

What that means is that 3.0 tons of Elsie plus 2.8 tons of Percy, when moving at a constant speed, cannot quickly and easily do a 90 degree right-hand turn in a different direction towards the parking area.

So we continued on along impossibly narrow (and beautiful) country roads through Tilba Tilba (no, that’s not a typo … the next township is called Tilba Tilba) until we approached the highway again, as it was completely impossible to turn around.

And we encountered a problem.

Google Maps is saying “turn left in 300m”. Brandon is saying “turn right in 300m”. MBW wanted to go to Central Tilba and walk the same streets that Paul from River Cottage has walked. I just wanted to get to Bega, have coffee and take off my shoes.

Anyway, we turned left and went back to the start and did another lap. Glad we did too as it is a very pretty little township.

I got coffee in Central Tilba, so it wasn’t a total loss 🙂

Another hour down the road and here we are in Bega. The main things that we wanted to see are closed temporarily – I don’t know why – and by the time we found the showgrounds where we are staying tonight, got level, got disconnected, and went for a quick drive, it was dark.

Dinner, blog, shower and bed. MBW is playing MasterChef catch-up again, so I’ll settle in with a good book, me thinks.

Today was only 373km but it took us all day to do it. Mind you once we passed Nowra it all got a bit slower … and we weren’t in a rush.

Tomorrow we will start heading back towards Canberra. We still have no idea when we need to be back home, so I’m hoping for the best.

You can see on the map above that the distance from Bega to Canberra is only about half the distance from Bulli Beach to Bega, so it should be a cruisey day. Time to stop and smell the roses … or donuts and coffee if we are lucky!

We passed 2,000km today somewhere just after Central Tilba and still having fun!!

Glad to have you along for the ride.

Ciao

#RoadTripNSW2022