But Yamba was nice. There's not too much to say so I'll just chuck up a heap of pictures.
We stopped at Iluka for a night, and kayaked to shore to go exploring. We wandered along the beach and explored all the rocks and rock pools, which was stupidly fun. There were lots of interesting things to find in the pools. My favourite was a giant snail who was missing his shell, so he just looked like an oversized slug. But there were lots of cool rocks as well as crawly things and fish and birds and water. So a nice day all round.
We walked back through a rainforest, which was supposed to be home to coastal emus, rare birds and koalas. We found none of these, although our bird watching skills have significantly increased. I've never walked so quietly for so long before. I kept expecting to get eaten by snakes, seeing as we were all creeping through the bush staring up at the sky instead of at our feet. But we didn't find any of those either, thank goodness.
There was a pub on the beach and after a rest on the boat from our exhausting explorations, we kayaked back for dinner. That was pretty fun - just jumping in the kayak and rowing over to the pub. The food was both good and cheap and it was nice to eat out - I think our first time since Sydney.
Then we spent a day in Yamba, which proved more exciting than we had planned. We knew there were a lot of shallow bits on the way but we tried to sneak out just below low tide anyway. No dice. We got very stuck and after trying to wiggle out, pumping the engine and finally letting out the headsail to try and heel over a bit and bring the keel off the ground, we were still stuck. So we had to sit there at the entrance to the anchorage area for three and a half hours. I put the anchor down and tried to look like we were just casually fishing, but there were no fish. And we were facing the opposite direction to everybody else. So that was embarrassing.
We stopped at Iluka for a night, and kayaked to shore to go exploring. We wandered along the beach and explored all the rocks and rock pools, which was stupidly fun. There were lots of interesting things to find in the pools. My favourite was a giant snail who was missing his shell, so he just looked like an oversized slug. But there were lots of cool rocks as well as crawly things and fish and birds and water. So a nice day all round.
We walked back through a rainforest, which was supposed to be home to coastal emus, rare birds and koalas. We found none of these, although our bird watching skills have significantly increased. I've never walked so quietly for so long before. I kept expecting to get eaten by snakes, seeing as we were all creeping through the bush staring up at the sky instead of at our feet. But we didn't find any of those either, thank goodness.
There was a pub on the beach and after a rest on the boat from our exhausting explorations, we kayaked back for dinner. That was pretty fun - just jumping in the kayak and rowing over to the pub. The food was both good and cheap and it was nice to eat out - I think our first time since Sydney.
Then we spent a day in Yamba, which proved more exciting than we had planned. We knew there were a lot of shallow bits on the way but we tried to sneak out just below low tide anyway. No dice. We got very stuck and after trying to wiggle out, pumping the engine and finally letting out the headsail to try and heel over a bit and bring the keel off the ground, we were still stuck. So we had to sit there at the entrance to the anchorage area for three and a half hours. I put the anchor down and tried to look like we were just casually fishing, but there were no fish. And we were facing the opposite direction to everybody else. So that was embarrassing.
Getting into Yamba was scary after that encounter - we lost our "it will be fine" attitude to water depth for a day or two. The preferred channel on the charts went through a lot of sections that were supposed to be one metre deep, so it was pretty nerve wracking crawling through to the marina. We knew it was probably dug out for big boats to get through, but I was watching our little arrow on the chart supposedly going over 0.9 metres of water and trying not to panic. We got stuck in 2.2, so we were all nervous. Of course it was fine.
We had trouble trying to fill up with fuel when we got there - the breather hose must have been blocked, because fuel just kept bubbling back out and going all over everything. We eventually filled up with Sam sitting downstairs watching the fuel tank with the lid cracked. So we obviously need to look at that - I think the breather just has a bend in it or something. On the plus side, Garth used one of my good towels to mop up the diesel. So I guess it's a good thing we got rid of something else off the boat, I just hate trashing nice things.
We were only in Yamba for one day so Sam hired a third bike and we went exploring, riding all day in pretty surroundings. We went to Angourie to see a blue pool that was supposed to be really pretty, but there was algae in the water so we couldn't go swimming. Picnic lunch on the beach and a nice ride home via a lagoon, and that was Yamba. It was a cute little town and some of the surf beaches looked great - I'd love to visit in Summer.
Xxx Monique
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