FriendBurst Blog

Day 4 – Sunday – September 19, 2010

Weather:  Cloudy & Chilly

Destination:  Narooma, New South Wales, Australia

Odometer Reading:  95727

Total Distance Traveled:  Don’t know exactly, but it was somewhere close to 384 kilometers (238 miles).  From here on I’m going to be able to keep better track of how far we have gone each day now that I have an actual odometer reading to work with.

Price of Fuel:  Canberra $75.25 (I’m also going to have to start keeping track of the liter price and how much diesel we’re using)

Route Taken:  Queanbeyan to Canberra to Queanbeyan to Bungendore to Doughboy to Braidwood to Bateman’s Bay to Moruya to Narooma

Highlights:  The upper bunk in this motorhome is not the most comfortable place to sleep.  First you have to climb up this rickety aluminum ladder to get into it and then the bunk itself has such a low ceiling clearance it’s almost coffin like.  I think tonight we’ll make up the back seating area into a full time bed.  We might as well take advantage of the extra room in this thing.

We were up well before the sun today, partly because of the bunk and partly because we’re still on Vegas time.  Since we’re on our own that isn’t a problem for us and it just meant that we could get an earlier start.  After a quick breakfast, we drove back into Canberra to find some things we wanted to see.  After driving around a fair bit (see notes below) we made it to the Dinosaur Museum first.  The entry fee was $11.00 per person and it was a fair sized museum with lots of interesting displays.  It took about two hours to walk through and we thought it was well worth the stop.

After that we went to the Australia National Museum which was nice, there was no entry fee and it was a large complex, but it had large empty spaces.  I didn’t take the camera in with me since I didn’t know if it would be allowed or not and I didn’t want to have to walk all the way back to the motorhome to put it away.  Since the motorhome is so large, we had to park out where it would fit and it was a bit of a walk through the parking lot.  The exhibits, about seven in all, were really well done and gave a lot of information with interactive displays.  We spent quite a bit of time in the invasive species display.  There was a map of Australia that showed the historical migratory invasion of different species of animals and plants which was really cool.  There was also a historic persons area that was very interesting.  It was amazing to see all the different people, from all over the World, that have had some significant effect on Australia throughout history.  Even though we thought from the size of the complex that there would be more, it too was well worth the stop.

Stops:  There were a lot of stops in Canberra today since we kept getting lost and kept getting into fights with Lee, the guy in the GPS unit.  That twit had us going all over in circles all day and I think we called him everything but state-of-the-art.  We finally decided to get out of Canberra about 2:00 pm and changed the GPS to Karen.  She seems a bit nicer.

The nice thing about driving around the Canberra area was that we were able to see some things we have never seen in the States.  Large groups of cockatoos just sitting in the grass at the side of the roads.  Kangaroos grouped together feeding out in fields.  Then there were the teddy bears that were tied to the trees, which I thought was a bit strange, but we used to have a tree with shoes in it in Nevada, so I’ll have to try to find out the story.

Where We Stayed:  We made it to Narooma and found a spot to stay at Easts Narooma Shores Holiday Park, which was situated right on the bay.  The rate was $31.50 for the night, with the discount that Cheapa rentals receive.  We liked the feel of this town a lot and before dinner we took a walk along the water and around the dock.  We saw a seal and some really pretty purple jellyfish in the water.  The lady at the campground desk had said that the whales were passing by in great numbers so we hope to catch sight of a few before we leave.

Where We Ate:  We ate in the motorhome.  A dinner of McCain’s frozen beef and pasta dinner with mixed green salad.  It was easy and very tasty.