It has been raining for some days now and we are getting a little tired of being constantly damp! Amazingly though, each time we go for a walk somewhere, the rain stops and at least we can walk in relative comfort.

But this morning we were greeted by some blue skies again and a little warmth in the air. Is summer beginning to arrive?

The Bay of Fires is the next big ticket item on the tourist trail, but before heading there, we detoured inland a little to see what the hinterland was like. Another walk, another waterfall. Grey Mare's Tail Lookout in the mountains behind St Helens made us wonder how the name came to be. The waterfall was lovely plunging into a deep gorge we couldn't see the bottom of. St Marys, the little hilltop town, was nothing to write home about and we left there via some more forestry tracks that were similarly nothing to write home about. In St Helens, we located an often sought but rarely found seafood seller. We've checked out the crayfish before (when we could actually find any for sale) and it's all been poisonously expensive. The crays were quite a bit cheaper here but at a minimum of $82 each we passed on them again. We have seen boats unloading them by the hundreds into refrigerated trucks on small wharves but it seems that 99.9% of them are destined for OS. But who pays these sorts of prices for them and where??

So we settled for some fish and some scallops then headed to the waterfront to partake of fish and chips for lunch in a fake paddle-wheeler floating at a jetty.

Finally we turned towards Binalong Bay, the southern end of the Bay of Fires. Just before Binalong bay is the Humbug Point Nature Reserve which also impressed with its fine sand beaches and huge granite rocks tumbled over the beach.

Campsites are scattered along the length of the Bay of Fires which is a very long stretch of beach. We had heard that Cosy Corner was one of the better spots and we soon found a completely private absolute beachfront site and settled in. Though we had had blue sky for much of the day, clouds started to come in and the wind strengthened.

The beach here has been consistently voted as one of the most stunning in the world. Even in the overcast and windy conditions it is indeed beautiful - it must be out of this world in clear and warm sunshine. The sand is pure white and the sea is turquoise. Huge granite boulders carve the long stretch of coastline into smaller beaches. Piled haphazardly on each other they stretch out into the ocean where the wild surf sends waves crashing into them filling up crevices with pools of transparent water. The boulders themselves are covered with the brilliant orange lichen which looks like fire from a distance. This was not however the origin of the name. Early explorers so named the bay because of the fires they could see started by the local tribes all along the coastline.