Thursday 14th January
The backpackers’ guide to cost effective errand-running while camping:
* Find a free wifi signal to call home in the Australian AM - outside the pharmacy in Crescent Head, for example.
* Seek out a place, preferably an independent campsite, where you can do your laundry. If you’re lucky, you can also find a few plug sockets to charge all your flash packer items: phones, ipods, netbooks etc
* While your laundry is in, sneak in for a cheeky hot shower, following a camper who will type in the code to unlock the door - this could be the only hot shower you’ll have in a week.
* When fully clean and your laundry is either in the dryer or, even better, drying for free on the washing lines provided for campers, enjoy a coffee at the cheap and cheerful campsite café
* Don’t forget to fill up your water canister with either drinking water or at least water for washing up - this will come in handy later when you stay at a National Park or ‘free camp’ with no amenities
* Finally, find a McDonalds - not difficult in Australia - and spend a few hours doing internet jobs such as research and blogging using their free (but rather rubbish) wifi. There should be a plug socket too where you can charge for free if you haven’t managed earlier in the day. DO NOT buy anything - instead, ask for a tap water which you can then cradle for the next three hours… perhaps treat yourself to a 50cent ice-cream if you feel you can justify it.
* On the way out, ask for two large cups of ice each - this will be used to put in the coolbox (or ‘eskie’ in Ozzy) to ensure the beers stay cold.
We’ve finally left Delicate Nobby! Though it’s been the best place we’ve stayed so far with everything we could want - excluding a nice, hot shower - we felt it was time that we explored other places. We thus headed further up the coast to Hat Head National Park.
Hat Head is on the coast and Smoky Cape camping ground where we stayed is set back in the dunes of Smoky Beach. Chris and I went for a lovely stroll on this, yet another beautiful, unspoiled beach after dinner.
Smoky Cape Beach, Hat Head National Park
Yesterday, we had decided to invest in a ‘hobby item’ each: for Chris a fishing rod, complete with all the tackle PLUS an Ozzy cool bag for his beers… I had been undecided on whether to go ahead and spend the money seeing as mine was an item that I couldn’t really take with me: a body board. I had waited an extra day to sleep on it but today finally decided to invest… YEY! I couldn’t believe I’d been at Delicate Nobby all this time and hadn’t been able to check out the waves properly. Neither of us could wait to use our hobby items.
As it happened, we arrived at Hat Head too late to try either of our things, having done a lot of cost-effective errands in addition to being indecisive about where to spend the night. By the time we arrived and had set up camp it was already late and tea-time (Stag chilli and rice again!)
Oh my gosh though - we ended up camping next to an absolute nutter. A man on his own who looked very strong and we assumed he had been in the military - everything was very neat and tidy and efficient and he had an army flask… but he spoke to himself and made funny faces and gosh… We ended up befriending a lovely couple who had set up camp on the other side of us: Penny and Lindsay. We spent the evening chatting with them, feeling the benefits of safety in numbers while the nutter next door danced and sang wildly to the radio, exclaiming things like: “Stop playing things I don’t know the words to! If you keep playing songs I don’t know, this is what you’ll get” (presumably describing his weird, fake singing). Agggggh! Very scary. We really were going to pack the tent up and move it elsewhere but we more fearful of causing offence, worrying that he may come after us in the night. So we risked it and stayed put, listening to him say things like, “Mate, what you’re looking for is in the white car there. I’ve told you once, it’s in that car”… meaning our car! Aggh!
Did we survive the night? Check in next time to find out….
Penny and Lindsey
(P.S Thanks so much for the National Parks book and all your advice!)
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