the speechaholic: Day Five: Tuesday

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Day Five: Tuesday

Day Five: Narooma, Tilba Tilba and the Far South Coast.

The south cost is broken up into several sections, probably like counties. We are staying in the Eurobodalla region, and have visited both the Shoalhaven and Illawara regions to the north. Today we drove through the rest of the Eurobodalla region and on through the Sapphire Coast, the last region. The Sapphire Coast is referenced by those living there as ‘The Far South Coast’. Which is exactly what it is! We didn’t drive all the way to the end of New South Wales (NSW), although, I was tempted to- just to say we did… but Blake had no such temptation ;).

I can’t even begin to describe what a beautiful day it was! It was perfect weather and just breathtaking coastline. Beach, after beach had beautiful sand and crashing waves. We stopped at several to walk along the boardwalks and onto the beach to collect shells. It was windy (but what beach isn’t windy) and brisk, but absolutely refreshing!

An interesting twist to the day, was that my camera had been bumped in my purse and on all night. So when I went to take my first picture, it screamed at me with red lights that the battery was about to die. I was so sad! I have a reputation of forgetting to charge the batteries.. but had been attentive about it this trip and was so disappointed to have to spend the day with no camera. To my pleasant surprise, I was able to sneak 43 pictures out of that battery! If I turned it off for a while it would ‘charge up’ a little and then let me take a few more pictures ;).

Our destination wasn’t really set. We were planning on going to Narooma, Central Tilba and Tilba Tilba Village to do some touristy things, and then we figured we’d see where the road took us from there. We also had the names of a couple of wineries that we weren’t sure would be open (they weren’t).

In Central Tilba, an old village in the hills, we stopped and toured the little shops and cheese factories (that don’t actually make the cheese anymore). We did some cheese and gelato tasting at one of the cheese factories, South Coast Cheese, and got some great advice from the ladies working there. A bit of irony, I had already bought some South Coast Cheese from the grocery store our first night, but I couldn’t remember which cheese place it was from until we got home. Funny that it was one of our favorites, and sitting in our fridge all this time.

On the advice of the cheese ladies, whose names we regrettably didn’t get, we took off further south and saw a few more beaches and towns along the coast, which we would have missed if we’d gone looking for the wineries that were closed (she called and found out for us).

Eventually, we turned around, drove home and made dinner. On a side note, it is finally possible for us to stay up past 8:00 and to sleep in past 8:00! We still go to bed much earlier here than we usually do.. mostly for lack of something to do. We often read in the evening, since there are only five TV stations, and on weeknights there’s news, more news, and weird Australian reality shows (although one night we were lucky enough to catch some Jamie Oliver!). It’s been nice to have quiet evenings.

I almost forgot again, on the way home we saw a pack (tribe? herd?) of kangaroos, 12 or 13 out in a field. The picture isn’t great because I was zoomed in all the way, but it was neat to see, and I’m just thankful my angry dying camera let me take those pictures!

Final news for the day: we tried Vegemite today. It was as disgusting as was promised and expected, but we had to try it anyway. In case you are dying to try it, we have plenty left that we will bring home.