South West Rocks, rocks!

As we didn’t manage to stay at the Beaches resort in Crescent Head yesterday we decided to eat at their Thai Restaurant called Yummy Thai. Strangely, we spotted the man that checked us in from Crescent Head last night eating with his family but he looked the other way when he saw us. It turned out to be a good choice and very nice it was too; Claire even asked for a doggy bag as we couldn’t eat it all. As you know, Claire usually, well always, has the Thai Green Chicken Curry but she has gotten a little fed up of it lately and when we ate in Mum’s Thai in Sydney she preferred my Drunken Duck. She has vowed never to order the green curry outside Thailand again. We shared a couple of spicy dished that were both lovely but there was too much. When we had finished we asked for the rest of one dish to be bagged up and got talking to David, whose long time girlfriend Dang, is the chef. They also have two dogs called Ding and Dong so you have, Dave, Dang, Ding and Dong living together, which I thought sounded like the name of a 60’s Band. When they had finished Dave got us a glass of New Zealand white on the house and joined us for one. A very pleasant evening, thank you guys!

We started the scenic drive to South West Rocks via Gladstone, which saved going back onto the Pacific Highway. Once at Gladstone, the road winds alongside the Macleay river, which was another wide one. The rivers over here seem gigantic against the ones we get in England and you always seem to be going over huge bridges. We had a quick detour to Hat Head which again has long lovely beaches, but I guess that we have put quite a few on this blog and your getting a bit fed up with them by now. I forgot to say yesterday that the beach at Crescent Head squeaked like the ones at Byron Bay, Fraser and the Whitsunday’s.

We arrived at The Costa Rica Resort Motel, that Claire had booked the day before, and were a little disappointed that it was quite a way out of town, but it’s nice anyway. It also has a small pool, tennis courts, a restaurant, a dive centre and even a squash court so its really well equipped if you were staying a little longer. It’s probably best when you are on the road in a car to find one when you get there, but Claire was a little disappointed yesterday not to get into the one she wanted and was playing safe and booked something that looked good on paper. They let us check in at noon so we ventured off to see the town and beach where I guess the place got its name from. It’s a very pretty town with little sandy bays all along. The Heritage Guest House was recommended to us after we had already booked the other one and it’s exactly in the right place. There is also an aptly named Chinese restaurant called South West Woks but it looks like it needs a little TLC. We wet our whistle in the Seabreeze and had the Sunday roast special at $10 which was excellent value for money and right on the front. We had intended to try the Surf Club but it was closed.

We then drove around the corner to see the Trial Bay Gaol where this funny little bird with a crescent on its head watched us carefully. The Gaol was built in the days when the main highway linking Sydney to Brisbane was the sea and Trial Bay was ideally situated to offer the ships a place of refuge. The Bay required a breakwater to ensure protection during storms so the Gaol was built specially to house prisoners specifically to construct the breakwater. Unfortunately, progress was slow because the local granite was exceptionally hard and because of storms and gale force winds and after 10 years it was only one seventh of its intended length. By this time ships had become sturdier so the breakwater was abandoned and the Gaol was closed in 1903. It was opened for a short time during the First World War to house about 500 German soldiers and decommissioned 4 years later and today it is in ruins.

The other sight to see around this area is the Smoky Cape Lighthouse so we headed off there. You park by Captain Cook Lookout and start the very steep hill up to the Lighthouse with the views getting better with every step. I caught some movement out the corner of my eye and managed to get a couple of shots of this green or brown snake as it slithered behind some rocks. I’m not sure if it was poisonous or not but I didn’t want to get too close just in case. Once at the top you could see beaches all along the coast stretching for as far as the eye could see but the distance shots don’t come out very well in this humidity. We had a little walk along a park type footpath that leads to a track that goes down to the beach but it looked a very long way down and I bet that it would be even further up again. Excitement over for one day, it was off back to our room to get ready so I can take my wife out for a romantic Lobster Valentines meal. Happy Valentines Day Everyone!