BELLINGEN

Tuesday August 15, 2012: It was another lovely day when we woke, a little later than we do at home. I managed to get the luggage down the long staircase and off we went around the corner to town as Chris had convinced Rab that there were some excellent shops while Marj had urged us to have breakfast at a little place - Swizz.

I sat in the car in the warm morning sun for the statutory hour that the parking sign allowed me while Rab went on her mastodon shopping expedition. After the hour was up I moved the car across the road into the shade and headed for breakfast. Excellent meal – poached eggs and crispy bacon on a Turkish bread roll with a nice big cold glass of orange juice. A good start to the day.

Since it was such a glorious day and we were in no hurry we took a stroll along the board walk just watching a boy fishing with his Dad under the watchful eye of a pelican and his father as the river flowed by. It seems a very nice spot , Ballina, although I guess it may not be quite so peaceful in school holidays, especially over Christmas. Marj grew up here, working on her father’s oyster farm, but we didn’t have a chance to get around to see the farm, which is no longer in the family, or to eat any oysters as they were out of season. Marj’s father was named Bob and she is well known around town as his daughter, so she says - guess she’d be known a Bobsdotter in Iceland and some other parts of Scandinavia.

There wasn’t a coastal road from Ballina heading south, so we thought we’d avoid the Pacific Highway by heading inland through Lismore, Casino, Grafton and Dorrigo heading for Bellingen which looked a good place to stop for the night. Easy day’s drive of about 250 km, allowing time for stops. Lismore was one of the first country towns I visited after we arrived in Australia back in 1987. walking down the main street I spotted some notices about twelve or fifteen meter up on electricity poles. Too high to read, I asked my companion what they were for. He told me they showed the height of the major floods some years back. Many Australian towns are built on the flood plains of rivers and  discover, on a fairly regular basis why the are called flood plains. Lismore has been inundated several times since then.

The countryside, which was basically rolling green hills as we drove inland  started changing after Casino, getting steeper and more dramatic and we were soon into the various State Forests and Nature Reserves which are a feature of so much of the Australian countryside. We paused at Grafton to pick up something for lunch. We had decided to just stop at one of the rest areas alongside the road for a picnic lunch as we didn’t need a meal after our satisfying breakfast. Since it was the sixteenth anniversary of my prostate cancer diagnosis we thought we’d push the boat out a bit and chose to have smoked salmon on crispbread, washed down with ginger beer in lieu of champagne!! Unfortunately the weather put the kibosh on our simple plan – a very cold wind was blowing making any roadside picnic uncomfortable. So we sat in the car and had our lunch there.

We were into very hilly country after Grafton. The road curved and rose higher and higher and we glimpsed some lovely vistas. Unfortunately it was a single lane road with no stopping places and we had to grab views when we could. Reminded me a bit of a memorable drive through the back roads through the Ozarks where we had similar problems. The descent to Bellingen which is at the bottom of a steep valley made for some interesting driving and we were sorry we couldn’t stop at two lovely waterfalls right next to the road. There were parking areas there, but it was getting late and light was fading. Dusk and dawn are times when kangaroos and other animals ted to move about a fair bit and we didn’t want to bump into any of those. A big kangaroo does a deal of damage to a car.

We cruised into Bellingen, a lovely little town with very few modern buildings and many older ones. We popped into the Information booth just before it closed and they gave us a couple of suggestions apart from the ones we’d picked up off the Internet. Rab liked the sound of one – Rivendell – which was in town. I was a bit wary of a place named after a place in Lord of the Rings, and so it proved. Very dark and gloomy, according to Rab after her inspection. So we went with our first choice –resort style accommodation just outside town. A bit more expensive, but very comfortable. There was a restaurant there and we thought we’d eat ‘in house’, but the restaurant was closed, possibly because it seemed we were the only guests at that time although two or three more came in later.

So we headed downtown for the Federal Hotel on the advice of the receptionist. Lovely old buildings with a noisy pub in the front on the street and a quieter bistro and takeaway at the back, down a little lane if you couldn’t face working your way through the bar. The special was Schooner and Steak for $13.50. Schooner being a measure of beer – about three quarter of a pint – at least in some of the States in Australia. This measure is called a pint in South Australia, where a schooner is the size of what is called a pot in New South Wales. Of course in Northern Territory a schooner is called a handle and a pot is a seven. Confused? I still am. I just point to a glass in a bar when I order a beer and say “I’ll have one that size.” It’s all explained here  Lights, Heavies, Mids and SchoonersExplained

The beer was good – well it was Victorian beer after all, Carlton Middie – and rhe steaks were surprisingly tender and pretty large too. Good sauces with the meat – Rab had pepper and I had mushroom – with a decent serve of chips/fries and a salad. Very good value.

We headed back up the pleasantly named Waterfall Highway and slept like logs. Nothing like a bit of touring and a good meal to do that.