Day Four - Booti Booti National Park

Sunday 10th January

I must say, I've been pretty impressed with Christophe's driving over in Australia, it being his first time driving on the 'wrong' side of the road as he likes to call it. He's really had no problems except... he has the terrifying tendency to drive straight through roundabouts. We've nearly been slam-dunked twice and thus, much to his frustration, I have promoted myself from mere back-seat driver to full-on driving instructor: "Give way to the left, Christophe. Give way. GIVE WAY! SHTTTTOPPPP! AAAAAAAAAGH!". Gosh.

Anyhow... We finally have a great map which shows camping grounds. ADVICE: don’t go camping in an unknown part of the world without a decent map. Advice we usually follow but this time we couldn’t bring ourselves to part with the $15! We’ve a few free ones now - yey! Our first stop was to check out ‘Boomerang Beach’ which a man in a surf shop near Sydney had told us about.

Boomerang Beach

What a relief to finally have a map and not just drive around semi-aimlessly straight into roundabouts! We could finally PLAN! Deciding to head for the coast just above the Myall Lakes National Park area, we stopped for a Macaroni Cheese lunch at Smith’s lake. The view was absolutely gorgeous: dazzling sunlight over crystal clear waters. We felt so lucky to be on the road at this moment! Some Germans rocked up in a ‘Wicked’ van (yet another company which rents vans to backpackers, easily distinguished by their graffiti-syle paintwork) and shared our picnic table. It was all very civilised and they even cracked open the red wine!

Lunch beside Smith Lake

Not far down this road we found our campground for the night in Booti Booti National Park: The Ruins Campground. The campground was on a kind of sandstrip between the ocean and Wallis Lake and was set back from ‘7 mile beach’, a gloriously empty, pristine beach. The facilities here are fantastic; there are even hot showers! It’s more like an independent campsite in some respects due to the amenities. It’s a popular campground with families and it’s great to see all the children playing out on their bikes.

7 Mile Beach - Booti Booti National Park

Because the campground is in a National Park there’s a fee to pay both for the car and per person to camp. Camping works on an honour system in Australian National Parks. People put their fee - which varies from campground to campground depending on facilities available - in an envelope, leaving it in a designated box after tearing off the receipt to leave on their tent/car. Apparently, a ranger will check for receipts in the morning. It’s a great system really and makes the whole experience seem mightily relaxed. Today, however, the box for receipts was closed off and the pay station for car parking was out of order meaning there was no way for us to pay… score! We planned to set off early in the morning before Ranger Danger time! This was the advice of one of our Greek neighbours…

One of our jobs today was to get Chris’ leg checked out as it’s been giving him a lot of pain: a mosquito bite from suburban-Sydney has grown HUGE, red and painful. Dungog, however, is such a small, quaint town that their hospital isn’t open on Sundays! We spoke to the receptionist who is there ready to call a doctor in if there’s an emergency but she sent us on our way to Forster, the next biggest town. We’ve decided to go there tomorrow as we assess his leg won’t yet have fallen off. I also plan on going on a big walk tomorrow as there’s a lookout point a few kilometres from the beach that I want to check out before it gets too hot. It’s been made easy and accessible for people to get outdoors and enjoy nature here with marked walks of varying difficulty wherever you go, it seems!

We spent a joyful afternoon on ‘7 mile beach’ reading ,before putting up the tent in the early evening while the sun went down. We camped next to an Ozzy family whose son was celebrating his 16th birthday with a load of friends. They’d planned this big surfing-birthday celebration a year ago apparently and came to apologise for the noise! We were just pleased to have a great spot to camp for the night with hot showers, washing up facility, somewhere to charge our electronics plus access to a great beach! We ate our delicious tea (pasta, tinned veg and dolmio sauce!) while listening to the 16 year olds singing along to their guitar.