Pigeon House Mt 4WDing Weekend – Day 1
YES !, finished work for the week & am looking forward to a nice relaxing weekend.sleep in, curl up on the lounge & read a book, nice & cosy, while the weather deteriorates outside..yeah right..get home only to go back out again to the shops to stock up on supplies for the weekend, get tea, do all the washing so its ready for Monday & start to pack ready for our weekend 4×4 down the coast, so there isn’t too much to do in the morning, & still wanting to get an early night sleep as we have to leave early although we don’t meet until 12.30.so far this doesn’t seem to resemble the relaxing weekend I had dreamed of !
6.30 comes all to quickly.we do all the usual morning things & finish packing the patrol, David’s being optimistic about the weather, but we still packed extra clothes & socks..just in case we got wet or muddy..hmm this is sounding more & more like a boys dirty weekend !.It’s cold & raining..nope I’m going to keep the ughs on! We hit the road at 8.30 and made our way down to Batemans Bay where we had plenty of time (due to David’s thinking that it was a 3&1/2 hour trip not 2&1/2 !) to have morning tea at the local bakery while being entertained by the parking ranger giving out fines to the cars out front, the owners come out from the woodwork at remarkable speed. The rain has stopped for now but is still looking sinister.
We made our way to Nelligen & to the meeting place, where 2 other families had already arrived. Brendan made friends with the other children & they all had a grand time running around while waiting for the other cars to arrive . The remaining families of our expedition arrived at 12.30 ( in total we have 10 cars) after the introductions we let the tyre pressure down on the tyres to around 20psi .and were on the road at around 1pm.finally !
After a few minutes we are on dirt (kings highway ) & put the car into 4×4 mode, it’s drizzling & damp but the scenery is nice & green. We then turned, right, into River Rd / Shallow Creek crossing where we crossed the creek, nice & easy, as it is a large concrete causeway. The roads then started to get a little bit steeper & had some very large erosion humps, we bottomed out on 1, a few cars behind us had a camper trailer & had a few attempts to get up the hill but ended up being winched & snatched up , this took quite a while. Once everyone was back on track we had another creek crossing ( Bimberamala River crossing ), this one wasn’t too bad, but getting out the other side, which was steep & now wet, was a little bit more fun & challenging, we all came thru ok except the small Suzuki which has to be snatched up at the end. We made a stop at the crest of Mares Hill where there is a look out – viewing the mountains & valleys below, it would have been spectacular except all we saw was mist & clouds, but we still got the cameras out & took some shots. Around a few bends and over a few narrow wooden bridges later we came to a nice flat stretch of road which had some very large pot holes – more like small swimming pools- filled with mud & water -some of the smaller kids loved walking thru them in their gum boots- there was a steep track going off to the left which vehicles could try to conquer if they wished.most of the kids, & a few adults taking photo’s, climbed up the track as 1 car – Ken- made a pretty decent attempt to get up the top but failed to make it all the way.
As it was now fairly late and getting dark we quickly made our way to the camping area ( Blue Gum Flat ) & set up for the night..yes in the rain.
After fighting off the local leeches for land rights the tent was finally up – with no thanks to Brendan, who was out of the car and playing his Nintendo DS games in an old shelter with the other kids as soon as we stopped – we put a tarp up at the end of the car so we could have a cooking area under cover – a brilliant idea from my husband! I had cooked chilli con carne & rice on Friday night so all we had to do was re heat the food & our meal was done – we trialled the new portable mini gas stove .which worked well. After we cleaned up, we went over to the shelter which looked like an old farming shed, where we all sat around the crackling fire & the kids had marshmallows, while were we having a few drinks & dodging the drips which were steadily coming thru the old corrugated iron roof, after a while part of the wooden beam, which David & I were sitting near, fell, landing on our shoulders & whacking me in the head, luckily it wasn’t too big to do any major damage, but it was filled with sawdust – not very comfortable in your hair & ears.
Ok, that was enough for me, I went to bed, with Brendan, leaving David to talk with the others and bring the chairs back to the tent when he was ready.
It was cold and, even though we had warm PJ’s, socks & beanies on, I still woke during the night shivering, only to find my better half sprawled out half naked with his sleeping bag practically off – he was hot .
( Continued on Day 2… )
