Strahan

We have tried getting into the caravan park for a few days now with no luck. They are both full and the people answering the phones are about as helpful as a freezer in Iceland. Turns out that both parks are actually owned by the same guys and the reviews aren't that good anyway. I stumbled across the fact that the golf course owns a pocket of land next to the greens that they let you stay at for $10 per night. No toilets or showers but you can use the solitary toilet at the club which is about 150m away. Sounds great to me - I can pee anywhere. There are also free public showers on the foreshore at Strahan which Nicole and family used, and were every bit as good as the reports said they were. I didn't bother with them tho.... I had a shower in late November so I reckon I have a few weeks left before I need to think about another one. 

The golf course sites are great. Tons of space and a great big cricket / footy oval right outside our door. The trip here was slow thanks to the mountainous roads, but I got here with the brakes still working and the van still attached, which is always a good thing.

On day 2 here we got on one of the cruise boats and went on a 5 hour trip up the Gordon River (otherwise known as The Franklin river). We had 20 knot winds last night, but this morning it was as calm as can be, which helped those few in our party that don't like waves. 

The crew were super organised at getting  us on board and seated. The seats were really just our allocated home base as we could move around the boat as much as we like... And we did. I think I only sat in my seat for about 15 minutes out of the 5 hours. 

Had a great encounter with a massive pod of dolphins on the way out, and the history lesson broadcast to us as we passed each significant part of Macquarie harbour made the journey fantastic. We had a couple of stops up the Gordon River and in the harbour where we got off the boat and walked around, including Sarah Island which was full of fascinating history regarding the convicts that used to be incarcerated there, and all the peculiarities of running a penal settlement on such a small island. 

Getting back on dry land late afternoon, it was pretty quickly agreed that the kids needed to run off some penned up energy, so we took the frisbee, boomerang and cricket set out to the middle of "our oval". The frisbee kept Nicole and Gracie occupied for a short while, the boomerang very quickly became labelled as a stick, and the cricket match became a full on test match with the rules changing nearly every ball due to someone getting out in a way they weren't happy with. 

At 4 o'clock we wandered up to the golf club and sat outside with a few brews whilst the kids tore around like caged monkeys trying to amuse any poor sole that happened to be looking their way, and finally decided to head back to the van before we had a lifetime ban placed on us. 

Off tomorrow to Lake St Claire, hoping that the crap reviews of the caravan park we have seen so far are from grumpy 5 star caravanners and not from normal happy campers like ourselves, with our 6 very loud, but very happy children -(who, by the way, were behaved so well on the boat today that 2 separate couples came up to us at the end and congratulated me on my parenting skills). Ok... They really said that our kids were wonderfully behaved and very pleasant. I am taking that as credit to Tracy, Nicole, Rob and myself as being good parents.