First, the cereal aisle. Where I find Rice Bubbles. These are in a bright blue box with three very similar characters on the front of the box that look and are dressed just like Snap, Krackel and Pop, my good friends from America. Then to the baking aisle, where I wander very slowly looking for some resemblance to marshmallows. I find some finally, ¾ of the way down the aisle on the bottom shelf there are three varieties. Multi-pastel colored miniature sized ones. Medium pink and white ones and “large” sized pink and white ones. Large marshmallows here are apparently half the size of good ‘ole Kraft Jet-Puffed Marshmallows back home. So I debate. I could buy 4 packages of the ‘large’ ones and pick out all the pink ones to have enough white ones to make a small batch or I can risk using the pink and the white together and should only need two packages. I decide to consult the back of the Rice Bubbles box to see what kind of quantities it says since everything is in metric and the recipe as I remember it says 40 large (remember—US large is twice the size of Aussie large) or 4 cups of miniature… again, their miniatures are like 6 colors and I know they won’t look good melted together… As I browse the back of the box there are three recipes and not a single one of them for rice bubble snacks… I decide to turn to the side, as what Rice Krispy box doesn’t have the staple treat printed SOMEWHERE!! Nope. Nothing. Not even anything close. Alright, it is down to my good judgment and I head to the Lolly aisle.
Yes, the Lolly aisle. AKA candy aisle. Here I find a large assortment of tear dropped shaped “cloud” candy. It is closer to the size of Jet-Puffed Marshmallows, but still, white and pink. So I stick with what I have. I made them, and they taste much the same, but they are a nice shade of pink. Matt ate some and I asked if he ever had any back in Seattle on any of his visits and he doesn’t remember having any. I tried to convince him to envision them without the pink and he looked rather confused…nope, still didn’t remember them. Oh well-all is well.
The road trip. We drove a lovely 8 hours from Melbourne northeast to Narooma. Let me tell you. This is the part of Australia I wish I had seen on my very first trip here. Absolutely gorgeous. Every last mile—uh, I mean Kilometer. After about an hour and half of travelling we were officially in rural country. Rolling green hills and ‘mountainous’ peaks… aka, larger hills that resemble mountains when everything else is so flat. As we drove I saw a sign for Snowy River. I asked if it was “the” Snowy River” (from the movie ‘The Man from Snowy River’ and ‘Return from Snowy River.’) and I was told we were quite close to ‘High Country’ which was Matt’s cryptic way of saying ‘Yes’. Let me tell you the movie does not do this area justice—and if I remember correctly, the movie had some beautiful scenery in it. Nothing like seeing in the flesh. It was a nice, sunny day and as we drove closer to the coast, the greener things got. Parts of the way were quite windy through gum tree lined gullies and wrapping around rocky limestone cave regions. Then we would come around dramatic corners to catch glimpses of the shiny blue ocean. After we left a little town there was a lookout that looked back over the sleepy valley. I took some pictures that are on Matt’s camera and I will send some along here as soon as I get them downloaded to my computer. It, like the movie, does nothing for how beautiful it was. It was right near sunset so the light wasn’t to strong and the colors may not have turned out quite right.
Now we have landed in Narooma and it was pretty dark when we pulled in. It rained something fierce over night and it is a little overcast still this morning, but I can see how tropically beautiful this area is. It is suppose to be getting on into winter and yet everything is green and several plants are blooming. This area is one of the most mild in all of Australia because it gets warm northerlies in and cool southerlies in but never the extreme of either… By the time they reach this area, they are about as mild as they can be. So the weather is consistent most of the year around, but I would say it is perfect as it is right now. I plan on spending some time walking around this town the next couple of days while Matt is working so I can take lots of pictures. Hopefully we’ll get at least a day or two of nice sunshine so the inlet has it’s best qualities shown.
Day One:
Wow. What a view. I am just in awe of the view from my hotel room. I want to live right HERE!
What great weather too. Pack up the sunscreen, visor and camera and I am that lone tourist in town because this is the off season my friends and this sleepy little town has nothing but Rugby and fishing to keep the locals busy. I took a nice little walk down to the left from the hotel and very shortly I was on the “flat” as they call it. This is where the main little strip of shops and services are and there are two large caravan parks on either side of the two lane highway that serves as the main drag through town. Also. There is one signal along the highway in this area and it is for a crosswalk, not for cross traffic. Anyway, Matt is working along the highway at a service station so I stop to check on him. He has a little bit of a toothache that developed before we left Melbourne, but he seemed to think it was going to be fine. Ha. I know what kind of agony my sister went through with her tooth from hell, I wasn’t convinced. He told me it was getting worse and it is only day one. On I continued across the bridge. The water below is brackish sea water meets fresh water but clear as Evian water. Stunning turquoise blue and full of fish.
I walk along the footpath to Mill Bay board walk. The board walk goes across the north shore of the inlet and out to the protective rocks. I had a look at the tide schedule before I left the room and knew that high tide was to come within the hour. As I walked along the boardwalk I was in true wonderment at the clearness of the water. Then I noticed this stream of fish. Millions of these were lined up and swimming in with the tide. The line up began about where the Gum trees began shading the water and it turns out that it continued all the way to the end of the boardwalk. Millions.
Little did I know that I would get to see the biggest Sting Ray I have ever seen. Not that I have seen that many, but it was incredible. I found myself following its elegant, graceful movement back down the boardwalk and took half a dozen photos along the way. It seemed to be very happy to stroll along the bottom right near the boardwalk in the shade of the Gum Trees. I learned later in the day on my walk back to town from a local man that there is one that is very friendly with the local fishing charters and often hangs around the fish cleaning station on the other side of the bay when the charters come in with their haul for the day. The local seaman feed it and it is quite tame and nice. Don’t worry Mom, I was very safe on the boardwalk and there was no chance the deadly barb could get anywhere near me, much less in my heart like the incident that killed Steve Irwin last September. The thought did cross my mind as I watched this one go by.
I could go on for pages about all the wildlife and stuff I got to see on this day… but these are by far the highlights of day one. In the evening Matt and I drove a couple of miles down the road to Mystery Bay where he taught me all sorts of fun and exciting facts about geology. I learned about folding, why some rocks weather or wear away faster than others and dykes. Absolutely fascinating. Rob—you and Matt could go for hours I am sure. While we were exploring all the fascinating rocks, I found some fun tidal pools filled with anemones, little fishies and even a few starfish. Matt was on the hunt for crabs, but we didn’t find any.
On day two I went for a walk along the south end of the inlet and took in the view of Montague Island where fur seals take a rest and a small colony of penguins call home. The island has some significance in the local aboriginal history and has been preserved from any danger by the Australian government. You can take guided tours out to the island to check out the historic light house and it is a very popular tour in the spring (August through October) as there is fabulous whale watching as they head towards the Antarctic ocean. Then down to the beach to look at more tidal pools and this fabulous rock. Look like anything you might know?
I got to help Matt with some Micropurging. Woo-hoo! His toothache was making things very difficult for him to concentrate. It wouldn’t be because he couldn’t really eat anything and he was taking some codeine coated painkillers to get through the day or anything… He did make an appointment for the next day with a local dentist, but had to finish up with 8 monitoring wells before we could go back to Melbourne. Abby—I don’t know how you do this for a living… Definitely not my cup of tea. J Fun for the day… not a career option for me. The next day, even though Matt was struggling, we did take a nice drive around the inlet and I got to see lots of birds and a great view of the inlet from higher up.
We also drove to Tilba Tilba. This town exists because of cheese. This whole area is very good for dairy cows because it has lush grass year around and the weather is not too extreme cold or hot, so Bega, Tilba and Bodalla all grew up to be great cheese towns. Think Wisconsin, but warmer. J Now Tilba is a historical town with local artisans and crafters selling their wares in old little shops. Very quaint and fun for exploring. Matt had an appointment at 3 for his tooth and we had to get back to Narooma. He had an abscess that is now waiting for a root canal in the next week or so. Matt really turned around after that appointment. He was feeling so much better after that was over. In fact, he slept something like 12 hours last night because he hadn’t been able to sleep for nearly a week with the tooth hurting the worst laying down at night.
We made it back to Melbourne and settled back in. I already want to go back to that area. It is just incredible. If you are ever planning on coming this direction… I can’t say enough how great that area was. It is not commercial like some of the other coastal towns I went to on my first trip and it was truly beautiful.
Hope all is well back home and hope to hear from you soon.
Lots of love and a big hug!
Alison
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