Back to Rosedale

We spent a night at the south coast this week, catching up with friends at Rosedale after a long break away from this beautiful part of the world.

North Rosedale was devastated by the New Year's Eve (2019-2020) bush fires and rebuilds have been slow given the scale of the losses and the hold ups and shortages of the pandemic years since.

Rosedale Beach itself is as beautiful as ever though .....   

... and this familiar walking track through the gum forest to/from the beach looked just the same as we remembered it .....

I took this picture of one of the burnt out properties on Yowani Road about 10 weeks after the fires in 2020. It was the same level of devastation all along that road, including the loss of Judy and Jurgen's beach house (which I couldn't bear to take a picture of at the time).

We met up with the old Rosedale crew for dinner on Wednesday night at Sawaan (Thai Restaurant) on Beach Road in Bateman's Bay - a reprise of a night out at the same venue in March 2020 (but in those days it was a Japanese Restaurant). 

We were impressed with Sawaan!

We stayed overnight at Malua Bay - right on the beach at a perfectly located hotel with beautiful views and terrible design and environmental standards (!!!)

..... and checked out John and Linda's house at nearby Lilli Pilli - the site of so many happy holiday stays when Joshy and his cousins were little ............

....... before heading back to Rosedale to check out progress on Jurgen and Judy's rebuild on Yowani Road.

It was all excitement this morning as a team of tree loppers was there clearing the fire damaged gums on the neighbouring property.

These old spotted gums are enormous at Rosedale - super dangerous in their fire damaged state and super dangerous for anyone trying to cut them down. It was nail biting at times watching the guys in action.

The tree/mulch grinder did a sterling job after that tree felling effort.

Just when we thought the show was over this guy started work on an even taller more dangerous looking tree, right near Judy and Jurgen's on site caravan...... yikes!

We thought the tree guys had a most unusual, but adorable, "ute dog", anxiously keeping an eye on proceedings.

The footprint of Judy and Jurgen's house is there in place, the steel frame is ordered; there's been huge progress in the last few months after all the delays. Judy and Jurgen are predicting it might be ready to move into by Spring next year???

We drank to that!!

The morning cuppa at Rosedale pic reminded me of another pic taken in October 2013 - same people, very different location (Chanoud Garh - a 300 year old fort/palace near Jodhpur in India).

Beautiful Rosedale!