the speechaholic: Day Six: Wednesday

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Day Six: Wednesday

Day Six: Changed plans, Bateman’s Bay, Eurobodalla Botanical Garden, Broulee Island Beach Walk and Kangaroos-Inside and Out.

We started out today with plans to go to Canberra, ACT (Australia Capital Territory) – the capital city. We got a really late start though (darn that being able to sleep in!) and decided not to start the two plus hour drive to a city full of things to do, at eleven in the morning. So instead, went to Bateman’s Bay to see what the town had to offer. We checked out their mall… not really that interesting, wandered around a grocery store (because we like food that much) and walked the streets until we felt we’d seen it all.

The highlight of Bateman’s Bay this morning was that we finally tried pies! We stopped at a café and patisserie for brunch and enjoyed our Australian meat pie experience immensely. Blake had a beef, bacon (ham) and cheese pie and I had a chicken satay pie. Delicious!

On our way back from Bateman’s Bay we decided, despite the drizzle of rain, it was the day to do the Eurobodalla Botanical Gardens. Obviously, this isn’t the time of year to go look at flora, since everything is half dead looking from winter, but it was a nice walk anyway. We saw some interesting things and just enjoyed the fresh air and strange trees. I swear, every tree was called Eucalyptus something, which leads me to believe that they just call all trees eucalyptus.

After the Botanical Garden we were headed to Broulee Beach to do the Island Beach Walk (which is quite close to where we are staying, but we just hadn’t done it yet). We decided to stop in Mogo and pick something up at the kitchen store that we felt like we couldn’t get back in the states (we love us some kitchen tools!).

Broulee Island Beach Walk was pretty neat. There is a permanent sand bar that connects the beach to the island (which I suppose really just makes it a peninsula) and we spent several hours walking around the beach, looking in the tide pools and watching the waves. There was a rock ledge that extended around most of the island, which provided most of the entertainment, tide pools and surface for waves to crash on. It was really pretty, but also a little tricky to maneuver. Mostly because there were little sea creatures stuck to the rocks –everywhere! We’ve seen their shells on the beach, and realized that all these little black dots on the rocks were those creatures in the shells, still living, waiting out the tide. I’m sure they’re just sea slugs or sea snails or something simple and almost pest like, but it was still hard not to feel bad when you stepped wrong and heard one crunch under your feet.

On our way to Broulee we saw a really large herd(?) of kangaroo again today, over thirty of them, and had the chance to safely take pictures and even some video of them. It really satiated our kangaroo interest and on the way home we passed several without flinching for the camera or to pull off the road ;). The real sign that we were getting kangaroo immune is that we… ate it for dinner. We are foodies, so we couldn’t pass up the opportunity to try something new… even if we previously risked our lives just to get a photo of the little guys. It was quite different than anything we’d eaten before. We made the mistake of getting the garlic and herb pre-marinated steaks, so that may have thrown off our taste buds some. I thought it would taste like venison, but really it didn’t. It was kind of sweet and pretty smooth. We decided in the end that it kind of tastes like teriyaki beef – whether that was the marinade messing with us, we aren’t sure. It was hard to find without being marinated, so we thought maybe it was primarily sold that way for a reason (like maybe it was pretty strong flavored). Final opinion: would eat again.

So tomorrow we’ll get up early and head of to the ACT and see what Canberra has to offer!