The Garden of Eden

We had a bit of a slow day yesterday after Jane and Ian left, just shopping and getting things ready for our big drive to Sydney and back. I phoned my mum at about 8am UK time and she said that the snow in England was awful and had stopped the Channel tunnel running. Also that my daughter Georgina had gone over to France for the weekend with a few friends and couldn’t get back because of the snow. One of the dad’s was on their way as a foot passenger as you can’t get your car over at the moment because of the backlog. They were able to stay in the hotel they were in for one more night and hopefully they will be back by the time this is posted. I will try and find out more and let you know tomorrow.

We headed off early and didn’t stop until we got to Lakes Entrance which it the first time that the Princess highway gets to the sea on its way to Sydney. The Princess highway is either called the M1 or A1 according to how many lanes there are, sound familiar? There are some spectacular views from the air where the lakes and sea meet. Not so good from the car but we had a small snack and a stretch along the sea front and headed of again. The highway led back inland again and it wasn’t long before we were in the middle of a rain forest. We drove for mile after mile, hour after hour with no roads leading off or breaks in the forest. No villages or towns to slow you down so you make quite good time even sticking to the speed limit. If you were caught along this stretch when there was a fire you wouldn’t stand a chance. The name of the forest kept changing from one national park to another but it was all the same forest; or bush as they call it over here. If it’s not the town, it’s the bush and the other side of the bush is the outback and that stretches all the way to the other side of the continent without break.

Once the bush runs out you are back to the sea and we had already decided to stay our first night in Eden. While we had been driving Claire was researching hotels and motels to stay at within the area. Her favourite one was called Heritage house www.heritagehouseunits.com which was the first place we came across and pulled into the car park. We asked the cost and it was cheap at $98 with free internet so decided to stay. We unloaded our bags and cool box that we have borrowed from Arlene and set off for a walk around. Eden is by the sea and has two bays which they call twofold bay and as we were walking down to them could see them clearly; it’s a shame my camera doesn’t have a wider angle, but I tried. Down by the bay we walked to there were little restaurants and shops; most of them seemed to be called “Great White Bite” so we won’t be venturing into the sea here. It seems a lovely little place with lots of tourist things to do like boat trips and plane trips amongst them. Chose a big boat, you don’t want to be caught saying, “We need a bigger boat”. The plane rides are advertising whale spotting but I guess it’s at certain times of year only and haven’t researched that. We had a walk back past our motel and found a little pub called The Great Southern Inn www.greatsoutherninn.com.au . We stopped to wet our whistle and liked it as the draught beer was cheap and was really draught. Over here, if you ask if they have draught beer they say yes, we have Carlton draught, you order two and they bring out bottles which are called “Carlton Draught”. Maybe I need to find out what they call draught. We also noticed that they did double rooms for $65 and singles for $35 which is the cheapest I have seen that are not backpackers dorms. The menu looked good too; they had grilled silver Dory for $19 on the specials board. It’s quite a modern place with large elevated decking at the back overlooking the sea a large modern restaurant and huge public bar with a pokie room at the side hidden by a fish tank. If we come back this way on the way back we might check it out if the sun is shining. It’s been overcast most of the day today, which is perfect for travelling, and the sun briefly came out on our arrival but the clouds soon came back for a small shower.

Claire has been watching TV and they are warning of a cyclone heading towards Sydney, due to arrive on Christmas day; joy.