A bit of a plan to make an unplanned and random trip up the NSW coast for the second week of the mid year school holidays. We left home late …. again, which is an issue when we were planning to launch our NSW holiday from around Merimbula or Tathra today which is a 7 hour drive. That said regardless of the exit time, any exit is a good exit.
Lakes Entrance, always a good place to be driving through
Lunch and run around in the Sale Botanic Gardens, Max got a brake from the car and the local Peacocks got a feed of McDonalds chips
The road was reasonably quiet and the run pretty good, but by 4pm it starting to get dark. Our trusty Wikicamps App identified 2 possible freecamps; one at Bellbird Creek and the other at Genoa. Bellbird Creek was 20min away at the back of the Bellbird Hotel and Genoa was an hour away in a former caravan park turned freecamp area off the highway on the Genoa River.
Genoa would have been the pic, but an hour was too far so he Bellbird Hotel it was. The building structure of the property is sprawling but the bar and public access area was quite small. The pub is currently for a cool $429k, which was a bit of a surprise
Ross went inside the empty bar at the pub and was directed toward the rear corner of the property to pitch camp. The van was reversed into the corner of the property and Ross and Barb then headed to the bar for a few cordials, leaving Daniel and Max to fend for themselves in the van. It was decided that Ross and Barb would have a lovely romantic counter meal by the wood fire and Daniel would get a doggy bag of chicken strips, chips and gravy delivered to the van. The pub meal was eatablebut pretty average, and very expensive considering the location, state of emptiness and simple offering. Daniels meal was pretty good by comparison.
The local paper had and article about Leongatha’s Lennie Gwyther, who at nine years of age in 1932 road his pony Ginger Mick alone to Sydney to witness the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The 6 week journey was made with the blessings of his parents, as a reward for running the farm when his war veteran father was injured and hospitalised for a period of time
The ironic thing was if the the pub asked for $10 per night to camp out the back with no facilities, we would have been so outraged we would have kept driving in disgust, but when offered free of charge we didnt hesitate in falling victim to our conscience and doing the right thing, and putting $100 over the bloody bar when we had a van chocka block full of food and booze
There was something very familiar about the Bellbird Hotel bar, hmmmmmm
It was the carpet; the carpet in the bar was the same 1m x 1m Bunnings carpet squares we have in the rear section of the van bathroom area.
The diesel heater once again came into its own and kept us all toasty warm thoughout the night … although a belly full of booze possibly helped with that one too
(The diesel heater has been blowing a bit of smoke lately, oh well stiff shit we’re inside and the smoke is outside)
We called past the Genoa freecamp area for future reference. It was a good spot probably far enough away from the highway noise, on the bank of the Genoa River with a toilet block and resurfaced tennis court
Around 8 years ago we headed up the east coast via Gippsland, and on that trip we briefly stopped at Cann River probably for a coffee. In the park in town was a 25 pound Australian Army artillery piece, significant because Ross dad was assigned to one during his army days. We took a photo of Daniel sitting on the 25 pounder, and another photo of Daniel in the mouth of a blue plastic hippo in the nearby play ground. Today we re-enacted those first two photos
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