June 13 2020. Saturday.
Woke up at 06:00, left my Bates Motel and was out of Pambula by 06:30. Temperature check 6C and a bit of drizzle. Drove through Merimbula next, and passed the Black Dolphin Motel which I then recalled having stayed at on a summer holiday when I was around 7 years old. I vaguely remember it was a really cool modernist design back then. Not anymore. I had this weird flashback of collecting lots of sand crabs and keeping them all in a sand bucket. I guess I accidentally murdered them all and still remember the stench. Karma will pay me back for this I am sure.
I decided to take the more scenic coast road to Bermagui and by-pass the Highway. Not much traffic this morning and barely saw another vehicle for the next hour or so. A few old single lane wooden bridges on this road. Drove to Tarthra next. Got out and went for a quick walk. Nice views and beach. A few fishermen on pier doing their thing. Next stop was at Cuttagee Beach which was quite spectacular at this time of the day, said hi to a surfer in his VW Kombi van – as you do. Then into Bermagui though didn't stop. Noted that the forest outside of Bermagui still looks bone dry compared to everywhere else.
Back on the Princess Highway again, passed a grizzly looking hitch-hiker, and drove until Narooma which turned out to be my favorite stop of the day. Headed down a hill, over a dead rabbit, towards the inland lake and came across a local fishing marina. There were lots of very tidy boat shed cabins along the water and a Oyster cafe with an impressive giant prawn on its roof.
Next I drove through Moruya and right past a Saturday morning Black Lives Matter protest outside the council building – which shows how far this movement has reached. Passed through Mogo and bushfire damage was quite visible. All these towns were unfamiliar to most people until last summer, but many people remember hearing stories about the Mogo Zoo. There was plenty of activity in the main street and clearly lots of reconstruction efforts happening today. Then onto Batemans Bay. Quite a bit of traffic around the narrow bridge and would have liked to have stopped. Drove a bit further and off into one of the suburbs and ended up at a nice beach. There was a ton of burnt charcoal along this beach.
Then onto Ulladulla and stopped again at Milton for yet another pastry. Once you hit the area around Conjola the bushfire landscapes return and around here (unlike previous bushfire zones I had driven through) it looked much blacker with little regrowth. Finally into Nowra which definitely isn't my favorite town.
Did a final detour and went to meet a friend in Berry for a coffee. Being Saturday afternoon, Berry was overrun with day trippters. Stopped at our favorite cafe but it was hell crowded. Apparently it has been like this during the week as well lately.
The final few hours into Sydney were not my favorite, and at this point I was starting to get a bit exhausted. I am usually always listing to my soundcloud feed and it always delivers the goods but somehow today the algorithms went pear and I found myself listening to some Serbian dark underground techno feed – which would have been better suited for someone lighting up a crack pipe. By the time I got to Rockdale and it's aggressive drivers I was really starting to zombie out. I guess this was the payback for murdering sand crabs.
Had to get the car back by 5 and fill up with petrol. Budget had closed their office in World Square so I was instructed to drop the car off at Star City Casino. It was the most convoluted set of instructions which sends you to P5 of a building that took 15 minutes to find the entrance. By this stage and 11 hour driving I was over it. Dropped Maconna and keys and walked all the way back to Kings Cross in a daze.
Insurance cost $220 (mysteriously not charged) :-)
Roadside assist $40 (mysteriously not charged) :-)
Wildlife sightings
Wombats [1]
Illamas [7]
Kangaroos [2]
Eagles [1]
Rabbits [1]
Hitchhikers [1]
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Roadkill
Rabbits [8]
Kangaroos [6]
Wombats [3]
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Best public toilet Mallacoota
Cheapest petrol Cann River $1.09
Best beach Cuttagee
Nicest countryside Genoa
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