Well, we moved on …..eventually and headed to a little place called Mossy Point, it was just beside a boat ramp
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From here we headed into Mimosa National
Park to Gillards Beach down a single lane 4km dirt road…..but it was well worth
it. The views, the peace and quiet and
the animal life were all great.
We stayed here for 2 nights and then we
were off again, this time to Bombala via Bega and Bodalla. Bega was the strangest little place, really
cute town where everyone seemed really happy, people who served us in every
shop were polite, helpful and cheerful it was quite disconcerting, but made me
want to hang around a bit longer, but the agenda doesn’t allow for that at the
moment!
We are currently in Bombala, a little town
on the Monaro Highway, mostly because they were having some Australia Day
celebrations that included wood chopping and shearing!! It is an area renowned for wool, wood and
lavender. Not only that but they have
one of the densest populations of platypus in all of Australia! That said we haven’t seen any yet! It’s a really picturesque little place.
Today we went to the Australia day
celebrations (albeit a day early) were amazing, even if I did feel like I was
in the North of England, rugged up in my 3 layers, a waterproof and a beanie!!!
What part of that was Australian! I got to watch some sheep shearing
competitions and some wood chopping.
Sitting next to a local farmer, I learnt all about the great art, from
the moccasins they wear when shearing to the fact that this was part of the NSW
wool strong Championships (A very big deal in the shearing world), and its not
just how fast you shear the sheep, but how much wool you leave on them and how
many nicks the sheep has!! Apparently as
a working shearer you get about $3 per sheared sheep and when I was timing them
it took the good ones about 2 and a half minutes to shear one, that’s quite a
lot of money per day!! Don’t get me wrong it would be way too hard going for me
(if not the shearing itself definitely keeping up with the amount of beers
those guys drink), I think I will stick to nursing!!
The wood chopping consisted of a person
(well an expert actually with a really shiny axe) standing on a small log,
chopping into it until it broke into 2 pieces, how they don’t take out one of
their own feet at the speed they chop at, was incredible!! Along with the white
trousers that all wood chopping is conducted in!!!
Tomorrow we are heading to Numeralla for
the folk festival where the festival and the camping is free…woohoo very
excited, and by the way still haven't seen a platypus!
Sad times xx
