Day 1 - Camping, Pebbly Beach

Ok, so here goes, if any of you are curious of the whereabouts of 'Pebbly Beach', it is about a 15 minute drive out of Batemans Bay. If you don't know where that is look it up on google earth or something.

Anyway today was the day we were going to be making the trip down the coast to Pebbly, we woke up in the early hours of the morning and quickly finished whatever packing that had not been completed the night before.

When all was packed (TIGHTLY might I add) into the car we were off driving down the road (at 7:00am) towards Kiama to go pick up my bestie - Kaitlin. By the time we picked her up it was around 7:15am.

It was a long drive and the time felt increased by an hour because of all of the cushions we were squashed in the back with, it was like, "I feel like I'm sitting in a over-packed cupboard where you desperately try and hold back the contents from raining out on you when you open the door".

Anyways when we finally arrived it was 9:30am making the trip about two and a half hours long. We hadn't traveled down to Pebbly for about two years now, AND it used to be an ANNUAL trip!

But the old dusty that you would travel down to get to the entrance of the national park had millions.....and I mean MILLIONS of potholes, so instead of a leisurely ride through a gorgeous old forest we were sitting on the edges of our seats telling dad if there was a pot hole coming up so he could avoid it, it amazing how much shadows can look like potholes!

Anyway we did arrive safely and when we drove into the campground a strange sense of nostalgia came over me, I have such fond memories of this campground and this area as a child, actually ever since I was a baby, a newborn, me and my family came here for about a week each year.

As soon as we arrived we bounded out of the car and walked down to the beach for a bit of exploring, we walked along the beach heading towards the next 'beach' along, Pebbly Pebbly Beach, (for clarification the shore is all pebbles) we didn't quite go that far though. We found a couple of nice pebbles and shells but we didn't stay there for to long because we knew that we still had 3 tents to completely set up.

We helped dad set up the big tent for a while but, when the majority of it was finished we wanted to go back down to the beach, this time we went in the same direction this time constantly bending over to pick up shells, we walked along and along this time going all the way to Pebbly Pebbly Beach, but sadly, although it was probably for the best, I forgot my camera.

As we made our way back to the camp almost an hour later we had a seawater fight and both of us got ourselves fairly soaked, so yeah, it was a good thing that I forgot my camera.

By this time of day it was lunchtime and we indulged ourselves with the finer things in life, basically my lunch was a nuttella sandwich on white bread, mmm mmm mmm mmm mmm .... YUM!

One of my fondest memories of our once annual journey down to Pebbly Beach was the fact that wildlife there was very much used to humans and human attention and from my earliest memories I remember feeding the extravagant bird life and even the kangaroos. But this trip you would only see the 'roos early morning and late afternoon. And as for the bird life it seemed as if they hadn't been hand fed in years!!!!

But I stood there for a while after lunch with a handful of seed trying to lure one very timid King Parrot. Eventually I guess the temptation was to much for him because eventually he launched himself from the tree's branches onto my now aching arm that held his dream.....SEED!

The King Parrot...

And again...

A Rosella...

And a Rainbow Lorikeet...

So yeah we pretty much ignored the greenies safety-non-scientifically-proven-signs saying 'PLEASE DON'T FEED THE ANIMALS', well they survived fine before so those silly sign writers can just go and let us and the birds and other wildlife just do what we like. Ugh.

Anyway we left the birds to enjoy what was a heaven in the life as they know it, and headed out on another walk, yes to the beach, this time we went prepared and we brought with us little disposable plastic bags that would probably annoy those greenies even more. Hahaha.

Anyway, we filled those up on our walk, but I think this was my favourite walk of the day, we kind of just sat on the rocks and watched the waves roll in each time bringing different shells and pebbles for us to look at pick up and admire...then add to our bags.

What we found....

It was mid-afternoon now, and since we really didn't bring anything except for cans of tuna and spreads we needed to go shopping, so we headed into Batemans Bay. We filled up our trolley and headed back home.....nothing much interesting about that =D.

When we came back to the ground, we helped unload the car, and then we were off...yes this was our fourth walk of the day, on this walk we didn't go the same way we had for the past three walks we just went straight, heading directly to the ocean.

On this walk we sat in the sand talked, built sandcastles and ran around, Kaitlin went NUTS! Like SUPER NUTS!!!! We dug holes...."Must...Reach.....Water.....Must.....Reach....Water", so yeah that was good fun. We were doing that for awhile, but the we kinda got hungry so we headed back to camp for dinner.

We helped prepare dinner, then when it got dark we sat around the gas light for awhile, but after this full long day we were ready to go to bed, so we did, at nine that night we called it quits and went to bed.

In the process of getting into my P.J's that night I found that I was severely sunburned on my back and upper arms from constantly facing the sun on all of our walks....it was very hard to go to sleep that night.

Anyway, me and Katie needed to pee in the middle of the night so we got up and exited the tent, now when we went on one of our walks in middle of the day mum and dad happened to see one very large goanna.

They told us stories about how arrogant it was and all of that, but the one crucial detail they somehow forgot to mention to us was that they don't come out at night. So back to needing to pee.

We walked straight out of our little dome tent and there was this possum sitting there, we weren't too affected by that, but it certainly reminded us about the goanna, so we edged around it (the possum), and began the journey to the toilet.

At every little crunch or crack we would swing our torches around the place and look for an animal (goanna), and then huddle closer together, let me tell you, it was an experience that night, but we made it, to the toilet and back to our tent.

It was the perfect end to one very full and long first day of camping...

More stories to be told soon.....on Day 2.