Now it's time to do the Northern Coast

Tathra is a lovely little town on the coast with an amazing old historic wooden wharf and related buildings, which have been turned into a very cool cafe and local arty place. People lined the wharf fishing the huge swell. Bonito and salmon seemed to be the catch of the day with many fish giving the angler the run-around, under and over other anglers, trying not to lose the fish or let it get entangled in the huge piers, before bringing it up 5 metres onto the wharf, in a catch-net.   Entertaining stuff!

We went down gravel roads to a couple of beaches in the Mimosa Rocks National Park.   The tall gums in the forest stretching themselves so high to catch the sun.   Their trunks smooth and pale with mottled patches.   Not sure if they are spotted gum or leopard gum – but you get the idea.

Then on to Bega on a great gravel road trip for 20km across the mountain where we stopped at the famous (in Australia) Bega Cheese factory museum and cafe for another pie!   Good grief, I have never eaten so many pies in my life (and not a single bad one yet)!

Again, the days have been pretty full, although we have had a little downtime. Bill went for a kayak-fish and had a great time, coming home with a flounder and silver trevally.   Enough for a meal, which we have yet to have.   Nicely frozen at the moment.

We had a bit of early morning fun (no smart arse comments thank you), with a first for me.   (no more even smarter smart-arse comments either).

We walked along the boardwalk of the Merimbulah river, donned our rubber shoes, stepped off into the mangrove foreshore and walked out to the sand bank, relatively close to the oyster farms.

So here we would do a spot of fishing on the outgoing tide. But first we had to get the bait.   We needed to pump for yabbies.   For my uninitiated Kiwi whanau and friends

The pump is a stainless steel tube with a shaft through the centre which has a plunger thingy attached.   So, you push the pump into the wet sand, where you see yabbie hole; suck out the sand by pulling the plunger out; extract the pump from the hole;  push the plunger in and spew the contents on the sand.   Hopefully with the sand and sediment and shells spewed out there will be a yabbie or two at the same time. Repeat the process a couple of times in the same hole going deeper each time.   Actually, why don't you just check it out on YouTube!  

And a yabbie?   Well think small koura from NZ – a small crayfish little fella that has a big nipper.

Anyway, so we got some yabbies and we fished and we caught and we put back.   All the fish were too small but a great variety including snapper, trevally, blackfish, bream.

We really liked Merimbulah – booked for 5 nights, stayed for 7 and now it is time to move on and away from the coast.

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