petesmedia

I took Megan to the top of Mt Sugarloaf  for an introduction to geocaching and after a while eventually found the tiny cache. The cache was so small we needed to bring our own pen to sign the logbook but it was worth the trek up twice as the view is pretty awesome and I got some cool photos.

Sunday

We headed off around 6:30pm for another beach week, this time the destination was 4hrs south of Sydney. As my iPod’s hard drive has died, we hooked up the netbook for music. We had a quick stop in Bowral for LPG just as the servo was closing then onto Kangaroo Valley. Aside from getting stuck behind a few slow people and a truck doing 20km/h it was pretty smooth sailing until we were behind a diesel Patrol blowing black fumes our way. I saw him swerve for something and by the time I saw it, it had moved another 30cm and it was too late. It was an echidna walking slowly across the road. My right tyres gave it a double whack. Bugger. There was no damage to the car, just a dent in Australian wildlife. We did joke about whether I got spikes in my tyres but a quick check in Nowra showed no carnage.

In Nowra we experienced appalling service from Oporto. Attached is our rant.

We passed through Ulladulla and not much was happening until we came around a corner and spotted a possum on the road. Yet again, I wasn’t going to swerve and thought he’d move. He didn’t. We clipped his tail. Upon arriving at Durras I started to think that the likelihood of hitting a kangaroo next was pretty high so we took it easy through the bush. There were plenty of rabbits about and the amount of bugs we had already taken out would be in the vicinity of 500.

Noor and Ross were knackered after working so we called it a night early. Around 11pm.

Monday

We started the day off with a look at the beach only to find it was completely flat. No waves at all. We decided to make the first swim of the trip over at Cookies Beach hoping that there would be some more waves. It turned out to be pretty much the same, just with some more seaweed. The water temperature was surprisingly warm considering we were about 8hrs south from our last swim at Seal Rocks which was freezing. So as we frolicked in calm conditions there were some little schools of fish swimming around and the occasional wave that could be body surfed. Ross was feeling exhausted from a small bout of the sickness so he went to lay down for a bit, trying to reduce the spinning waves and clouds.

We headed into Batemans Bay for some lunch. Fish & Chips at Innes Boatshed was on the menu. Delicious fish as we sat out the back and overlooked the Clyde River with the usual flock of seagulls and pelicans awaiting for a dropped chip. We did the big woollies shop and got some essentials for dinner. Just as we were leaving Noor came up with a great idea to get some lilo’s. (Inflatable mattresses to relax on the water). Unfortunately we could only find one. The lady laughed at us.

The afternoon swim was at Durras Beach just across the road from the caravan. The beach was still flat but we took the boards over and attempted some surfing. Although we suck, Ross and I were able to get up a few times. We figure that by the end of the week we should be able to “surf”. We went for a walk to the lakes boat ramp and were surprised how full of water it is. The depth gauge was almost underwater indicating about 1m difference from when I was last down here. It doesn’t seem to be open to the ocean at the moment but we’ll go for a walk and suss that out later.

Back at the van we got a fire BBQ started and cooked up some thick cut steaks with pepper seasoning to perfection.

Tuesday

We woke up a little later than we had anticipated we would today. The usually scorching heat making it impossible to sleep in later than 9am didn’t arrive until nearly 10. After a home cooked meal of bacon, eggs combined into a bacon and egg “Mc Yummy” on toasted English muffins, we cruised over to check out the beach for an early morning surf. Conditions proved to be inadequate with the ocean accurately reflecting a washing machine during its wash cycle, or “choppy” for those of you needing more mediocre and simple analogies because of your inapt creativity.

Instead Noor and Pete went for a float in the lake on the lilo and surfboard to waste away part of the morning while I hung on the shore chilling to music. My logic was if there were no waves to surf, what was the point in floating in dirty water doing nothing?

Anyway, its the heat of the day at lunch time now. We’re about to go on another road trip into Batemans and pick up some Bait for our fishing adventure tonight. Will get back to you shortly…

Chicken stirfry, forgot the chicken. Trip into Batemans Bay.

Wednesday

Woke up at 8am, Pete & Ross went body boarding in huge surf.

Noor and Peter went for another float in the lake. This time we took sunnies and did it in more style.

As part of the local scenic attractions at Durras is the caves on the beach located North of Durras Lake. The cave is pretty awesome in that to get inside you have to do a commando style army crawl for about 10m until it opens up into a cavity that you can actually stand up in. Noor had his little torch to light the way for us. Once inside it became apparent that we weren’t the only ones inside the cave. A high pitch noise and flapping was the sound of a bat telling us to leave his domain. So we did, crawled out of the top of the cave and sat down for a scenic view of the beach and cracked open some ginger beers.

Fishing on sunset on Durras Lake.

Ross: 1x 43cm Flathead 2x  Small Bream

Noor: 1x Small Flathead

Peter: 1x 38cm Flathead 2x Small Bream

Another fire BBQ cookup.

Thursday

Fishing off the beach sucked. Went to Emily Miller Beach, tried fishing off the rocks but got hooked on rocks and lost hooks. Peter got talking to a local dude and he gave us 2 fresh lobsters.

Went swimming at Durras beach. Had some decent waves. Ross was dominating the ocean on his surfboard and Peter had a crack at a few on the body board. We were later amused by the amount of fish swimming around the rocks and Pete thought it was a great time to test out his snorkel.

Seafood cookup for dinner. Everyone fell asleep with the telly still on.

Friday

Went for a swim in the morning but the surf was pretty spastic. Waves were going everywhere.

We left around 1:30 eager to be at Kangaroo Valley Bakehouse before closing time (4:00pm).

We left the rain and headed north on Sunday night stopping at Newcastle to sort out Pete’s lease and get some essentials from woolies. Another stop for Maccas then onwards to Smiths Lake. The drive was was good with minimal traffic. We arrived around 11pm and setup the WDTV for some comedy entertainment of The IT Crowd and South Park to relax after the drive.

Monday

More South Park then a trip into Forster for a big mammoth grocery shop to last the week then off to the beach and a spot of fishing to take us to dinner time, making the best of the weather and sunshine!

The beach turned out to be psycho with a massive swell. We had to stick with knee deep frolicking but even that didn’t last long as the seaweed was getting churned up and we were out of there to organise a bbq. Our bbq was a solid cookup with steak, spuds & salad although we were bombarded with kookaburras and funny turkey looking things.

Ross is making a delicious home made chocolate pudding for dessert to get us started with super desserts.

Tuesday

We woke up about 9am to another gorgeous, sunny day. Checked the surf report online while we watched a selection of music videos. Pete strolled in last and we decided to make pancakes for breakfast. Ross whipped up the mix and Noor took over with the spatula to cook the little suckers up. Some lemon, sugar, bananas and a copious amount of maple syrup later we were all ready to hit the beach.

We thought we’d better take advantage of the good weather so we headed out to Seal Rocks. We brought along our collection of high priced cameras and took some photos of the Sugarloaf Point lighthouse.

The water looked gorgeous from high above the beach and it was. We spent a good hour body surfing and another on the beach soaking up the sun before we decided to head home for some nachos.

Nachos was a really late lunch / dinner at about 5:30pm. We ran out of time to get bait and go fishing so we opted for a tourist walk around Forster to get some photos on sunset. We walked out to the end of the breakwall and snapped a few night photos then on the way back we found a small geocache hidden in a gazebo type of thing. It was only a small one so no treasure was found.

We headed back to the house and watched Forgetting Sarah Marshall followed by season 2 of The Inbetweeners.

Wednesday

Woke up and had breakfast whilst watching Bad Boys 2. The morning dissappeared and we lost a few more hours cooking fajitas for lunch. We had to do a quick trip ino Forster to refuel the car and pickup some bait for an attempt at fishing. Once back at the house we loaded up with rods and headed out to Sandbar for a fishing adventure that lasted about 2 casts. The beach was pulling strongly to the right and the wind wasn’t helping our casting. Within a few minutes our sinkers were getting washed up onto the sand. Dissappointed but still keen we turned around and threw a line into Smiths Lake. A can of pepsi helped us contemplate our next move which was to reel in the lines and jump in the water. We couldn’t find a channel that went more than waist deep, even though we walked/crawled/swam over 200m towards the centre of the lake. As it was so shallow, the water temperature was beautiful. We stayed there till the sunset and managed to snap these photos with the little Samsung U10.

Back at the house we cooked up another epic meal being a korma curry.

Thursday

We got ourselves up out of bed a little earlier and were organised to go swimming by about 11. We took a drive out to Seal Rocks as we knew the beach was pretty well protected from the big swells. The water was incredibly nice, there were no rips, currents, seaweed or giant waves to deter us from the water. It was a very leisurely swim with good waves for body surfing and it wasn’t long till we had to observe 5 bikinis being paraded on the sand. As we were floating around in the crystal clear waters, a massive ray came within 10m of us and headed towards Ross. A few girly screams later and we managed to avoid any major carnage. The fish life was incredible, birds were divebombing little baitfish whilst a pack of dolphins swam by and no doubt took their share of fish. There were also larger fish, perhaps whiting that were visible in the waves and at one point an entire school swam beneath our feet, literally hundreds heading in a tight pack towards the rocks. I felt like I was swimming in an aquarium but there were no signs of sharks

I also had the action cam which can go underwater, so we did a bit of exploring around the rocks to see what lived beneath the surface. Unfortunately I didn’t really see anything other than seaweed. Noor and I scrambled up on the rocks and enjoyed the view whilst Ross went to explore some photo locations with the possibility of bumping into some bikinis. Back on the beach we cooled our oranges in the surf by playing catch. Oranges float really well so you can chuck them out to sea and they come back. This entertained us for long enough for the oranges to cool after sitting in the sun. They were good oranges as well, no seeds but juicy. This was later washed down with some ginger beer. Something about salt water, citrus and ginger that tastes great. Noors feet got roasted by the sun.

Once the bikinis left we decided to hit the road as the scenery diminished. On the way back to the house we stopped by the local butcher and picked up some snags for a late bbq lunch. We cooked down at the Smiths Lake boatramp and observed the sunset. A secondary stop at the butcher on the way back to the house was needed for some chicken breasts which would later be turned into chicken pajamas with a little handywork from masterchef Ross. Whilst preparing dinner we watched a few music videos then fired up The Girl Next Door. We all agreed that Elisha Cuthbert should be in more movies.

PROBLEM

We ran out of ice cream! It was an emergency trip into Forster with a few photos along the way.

After an act of cold cock humour on the fridge door we had to settle with Connoisseur Caramel Honey Macadamia Ice Cream that also happens to hold the title of best ice cream of 2008-2009. Zoom, back to the house to cookup the chicken. We added breadcrumbs, pasta sauce, ham & grated cheese on top. 40mins in the oven and it was cooked to perfection. Once we got our protein overload it was time for one last epic super dessert. This one included chocolate pancakes, ice cream, sprinkles, honeycomb, banana and maple syrup. Ross’s recipe is up there competing with Pancakes on the Rocks.

As we only got 3/4 through The Girl Next Door we watched the ending then finished the night watching Fight Club.

Friday

After the success of Thursdays swim at Seal Rocks we wasted no time in getting back out there to frolick in the water. There was a lack of bikinis this time and the water dropped about 4 degrees overnight. It was cold.. to the point where you could cut glass on Noors nipples. It wasn’t that nice no matter how clear the water was. The lack of waves meant we were standing around a lot more which kinda sucked. We opted to scavenge the rocks whilst Ross took photos at the previously scouted locations. It wasn’t long till we spotted some crabs and after annoying them for a bit they decided to walk across the sand to the other rocks. I couldn’t help myself and had to pick them up. I felt like Bear Grylls in a Man vs Wild stunt, although the crabs were hardly a meal as you can see from this photo.

As always, the last day of roadtrips suck. We had to pack up and clean up the house. Load everything back into the car then make our way back towards Sydney. After a 5 day sunny stretch we travelled about 50 kilometres to what seemed like a backlog of 5 years of moisture in the atmosphere. The clouds had explosive diarrhea that concentrated on the car. I always thought that the number 2 wiper setting was a little excessive however in this downpour I needed an extra notch to crank it up to 3. As we passed spun out cars, people with hazard lights on, cars pulled over, zero visibility of lanes and had the occasional aqua plane we stopped at Maccas & the servo to refuel ourselves and the car.

After about 20 minutes we thought the rain had eased only to find that a further 10 minutes of driving, we were back into it like the world was against us. At one point we were down to 60km/h on a three lane 110km/h freeway. Hectic and epic at the same time. Amongst all of this mayhem there were still people driving like they had seen The Fast and the Furious for the first time attempting to get infront of the clouds (that stretched from Queensland to Victoria) like a P-plater in a shitbox car with a milo tin exhaust. Just as the clouds ran out of liquid and the full force of the storm eased off a little and we were off the freeway, hooray we made it. It wasn’t long till we had a typical Camry driver try and run into us by pulling out infront of us. I should have seen it coming, I need to automate my reactions to something like this…

IF { visibility == Toyota Camry }
THEN hit the brakes
ELSE yell abuse

Yes, I do have a thing against Camry drivers.

We did make it home safe, although it was one of the most memorable drives I’ve ever done. We have to look back at how lucky we were to have left in a psycho storm and return in a mammoth storm and enjoy the inbetween bit which was perfect.

FULL PHOTO GALLERY HERE –>

The above photo was taken in the RX-8 on Saturday afternoon. As you can see it was ridiculously hot, this provided a good opportunity to investigate ice skating. Penrith Ice Palace run the general ice skating in 2.5hr sessions. We missed the Saturday sessions but went back on Sunday for an afternoon skate. I haven’t been on ice skates or roller blades since I was in primary school, we’re talking atleast 10 years ago.

My brother and I were expecting to last about 30mins and give up after multiple bruises… however, I was able to ice skate with reasonable confidence! I couldn’t believe it as I whizzed around lap after lap I was in amazement that I hadn’t fallen down. Being 6′6″ the long legs were able to get me going with some decent speed. As usual, the youngest (my cousin) was way better than us and blended in with the groups going around. David managed a fair few laps before he ended up with blisters on his feet. The only problem I had was coming to a stop, although the walls worked pretty well. They ran a limbo & dance contest, I had no chance competing against kids that were up to the height of my knees at limbo so I opted for the sit down and hot chips then back on the ice for a few more laps. There were a couple of girls practicing some dance moves on the ice that provided light entertainment.

What we thought was going to be a painful experience turned out to be an awesome day with the hours flying by.

Download this low quality version here – 512×280  H.264 MP4 – 100MB

Download the high quality version here – 877×480 H.264 MP4 – 233MB