Camping

We have enjoyed a camping holiday as we made our way from Sydney to Ballarat.  We spent a week at Wallaga Lakes Park.

On our drive down Ben complained of pain in his groin and we found he had swollen glands in both neck and groin.  After a first night of howling winds and pouring rain, Ben crawled out of bed and vomited bile on the floor of the tent.  He couldn't even keep down drinks of water all morning. 

After hunting around I finally managed to contact a doctor in Narooma who could fit him in at 3pm.  By the time I got off the phone, he was out of bed and feeling a little better and he steadily improved throughout the day.  By 2pm, I rang the doctor and cancelled the appointment as Ben's glands had gone down and he asked for, ate and kept down a sausage roll for lunch.

The children enjoyed the jumping pillow;

riding the scooters they got for Christmas, although the roads were not very scooter friendly;

and going in a hired canoe with Daddy.

We also went swimming, both at the beach and in the pool.

We visited Mystery Bay, which is the last known whereabouts of our ancestor, Lamont Young, who I wrote about in this post. His boat was found near the rocks on this beach.

We also went on the Montreal Goldfields Tour, which was very interesting.  It gave us an increased understanding of the history of the area, and was also interesting to Simon and I to compare with the goldfields history of our hometown of Ballarat.  The children were excited to reveal their relationship to Lamont Young when we got to that part of the tour, and we were all fascinated by the trick of water divining with two bits of fencing wire.  All the children were able to locate the underground streams along the track.

On Christmas Day we attended the local Baptist Church in Bermagui.  We then had a lazy middle of the day with the children busily eating some goodies they got in their Christmas bags and playing with their new toys.  Later in the afternoon we attempted to go for a walk until we had a close encounter with this little chap.  We didn't want to run into any of his adult relatives so we decided to give up the walk and have a swim instead.

Unfortunately, the beach we went to was covered in jelly fish, including a Blue Bottle that I nearly stepped on.  We ended up making sand sculptures and had a lot of fun.

Christmas day finished with Burritos for tea before the rain set in again.

On Boxing Day we packed up our campsite and headed south, to freezing cold Victoria.  We camped at the Mitchell Gardens Caravan park in Bairnsdale with Simon's brother and his new wife.  We were very close to an excellent playground and even though the weather was cold and wet and a bit miserable, we still had fun.