A birthday week

It was another birthday week here. This time it was Rob's - on Tuesday - and because it's school holidays here he got to have lunch with some of his favourite girls - at "our" Eighty Twenty Cafe on the rainbow roundabout at Braddon. Abi and Jody are great birthday lunch companions (Ella couldn't make it this day!).

The day after we headed off for a two night south coast beach stay - mainly so we could spend some time with Rod, Claire, Pete and the boys at the Mystery Bay beach house. We had a motel room in nearby Narooma - but we only used it for sleeping; we spent most of our time with the fam at Mystery Bay.

There is a beautiful forest of spotted gums just opposite the beach house (part of the Eurobodalla National Park). We set out on Thursday, after a night of heavy rain to find the track through the forest to the beaches south of Mystery Bay: Poole's Beach and 1080 Beach (about 3 klm south of Mystery Bay)

Can you spot the kangaroo, part of a larger mob, in the pic below?

Not as hard spotting Rod in the forest ......

Beautiful, quiet, deserted Poole's Beach.......

With views of Montague Island out to the horizon.

We couldn't get to 1080 Beach this day however. There was a lot of water lying around on all the tracks, but we decided this small flood over the roadway was impassable for us walkers, granted we hadn't brought our waders.

The spotted gum forest was just beautiful, however!

Rod's friend owns the beach house on Negus Drive in Mystery Bay. It would be around 30 years old now and parts of it are showing its age, but it's roomy and solid, well maintained, and has a beautiful back deck looking out to the beautiful Pacific Ocean, and lots of bird life - perfect!

Having Ollie and Angus around made our short break a lot more fun! I took this pic of them in nearby Central Tilba yesterday afternoon. They were extra happy because we'd had a successful visit to the excellent village bakery and they had both scored some wins at the local lolly shop! I thinks its a beautiful portrait of them both - even with the ever present masks - a sign of the times we are in!!

We had an early morning walk around sleepy Narooma this morning before heading back to Canberra. It has the most stunningly positioned golf course overlooking the ocean....

There was a lot of haze over the Wagonga Inlet too......

We managed to find an OK coffee at Casey's cafe before breakfast served on our motel balcony. Not a bad view from there either!!