Bombala

Well, we moved on …..eventually and headed to a little place called Mossy Point, it was just beside a boat ramp

  and a little jetty/pier where you can watch the giant stingrays.  They were amazing…

  

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