With a bit of free time up my sleeve, and a ridiculously understanding wife, I managed to get away for a few more nights by myself. After last weeks snowy overnight, I decided to head to the coast to find some campsites where at least the camper water tank wouldn’t freeze solid overnight.
On Sunday morning I hooked up the camper and headed down the Monaro Hwy towards Cooma. As it’s ski season, the road back to Canberra was chock full of people returning from the snow. Fortunately the road into the snow was fairly clear.
I stopped for a surprisingly good curry chicken pie in Nimmitabel, then headed on down Brown Mountain through Bega to Tathra. Hobart Beach Campground is situated to the south of Wallagoot Lake. The campground is quite big, but fairly typical for a NPWS-run south coast campground. A lot of shady sites of various sizes and a few drop toilets – probably not enough for the size of the place to be honest. This campground does have a few showers.
I set up pretty quick in site 41 and had a wander around the site looking to see what was around and where the beach was. The lake was easily accessible from my site and there were signs to Hobart and Bournda Beaches. The problem was that after following the path past all the other campsites, the path ended up completely covered with stagnant water.
I headed back to camp, set up the fire and settled down with a book. Dinner that night was some fancy sausages cooked over the fire in some wraps. I like wraps while camping as you save on washing up utensils and plates.
That night temps only got down to around 8 degrees, so I was pretty comfortable. There was a few incidents with possums though – one of them actually snuck into my van while I was eating dinner. It nosed through the trash bag I keep in the van and looked shocked when I noticed it and shooed it away. Then in the middle of the night I was woken up by two possums fighting at the back of the camper, right next to my head. Not a fan.
The next day I packed up and tried going a different way to the beach from the day use carpark, but it was still covered by the same marshy ground. I never actually got to see a beach while at that campsite. With that, the possums and the slightly run down look of the place, I don’t really recommend this campsite – there’s better ones on the south coast.
I headed down south, said hi to some friends in Merimbula and got some fuel. Then I went back to the Princes Highway and travelled north for about an hour to the Mystery Bay Campground. This was another site I’d never been to, but it was a non-national park site and I was curious to compare with the previous nights.
The office was unmanned when I got there, and I completely missed seeing the honesty box on the right-hand side of the office. Prices were $20 per vehicle per night if paying on site, but you can book online for $25. At first the campgrounds looked very similar to Hobart Beach, but it was a little less structured with more variety of sites. The entire campground sits on a bit of a headland bordering a national park. Being a Monday, I managed to snag a nice little site a short trail to the cliff face. I set up the camper and then took a few beers and a book to a nice little seat on a rocky outcrop near the cliff edge.
Later that afternoon I went for a walk down to Billy’s Beach. This is a great little beach that collects a lot of black and white stones, with lots of rock pools and other bits and pieces to check out.
On my way back I saw another Delica had pulled into one of the sites. We had a chat about her new-to-her campervan, and she showed me around a little. It was quite a tidy conversion on a newer Delica D:5.
That night I had another dinner cooked over the fire – just some simple steaks served with some salad. The roar of the ocean made for great background noise.
As night fell a couple of possums came down from the trees and had a sniff around my site. I made sure the van was locked up and put my rubbish into the camper front storage to try discourage them from sticking around my site for the rest of the night. It didn’t really work as they still seemed to enjoy jumping on the camper roof later in the night, but at least they weren’t as aggressive as the ones the night before.
Overall I really liked this campground. There seemed to be a single permanent or long-term resident on site spread out in his own little area, but I didn’t see any rubbish or dogs around which you can sometimes get. The sites are varied and no matter what side you are it’s only a shortish walk to one of the beaches.
In the morning I packed up as soon as I woke up, then headed back up north to Moruya. From there I got a bit more petrol to top up, then headed down Araluen Road towards Araluen. This is a narrow dirt road we’ve done before. It’s in pretty good condition, but you do have to go slow and there’s a lot of hairpin turns and steep cliff edges with no railings. It’s a great break from the highway though and gets you to Araluen, just south of Braidwood, in about an hour. I went straight through Araluen though and headed directly down another dirt road to Major’s Creek.
Major’s Creek has a pub and a free campsite (donation box available) and that’s about it. I was hoping to get a pub meal before I headed home the next day. Unfortunately all the online information about the kitchen times was wrong, and I discovered that food is only served Thursday to Sunday. Makes sense, but it would be nice to advertise that somewhere.
The recreation area has a small covered kitchen area that was completely taken up by the only other campers, so I set up in between some massive snow(?) gums. I was chilling out there when a friendly local came around to have a bit of a chat about the camper and van setup. We chatted for about 40 minutes about this and that.
I went down to the pub anyway and had a couple of beers there. The owner(?) was smoking inside when I got there. They had a fire going and a big TV and the beer was cold enough. A couple of locals were out the front talking shit about cars and other locals. I headed back to the camper after about an hour at the pub, and set up a fire out the front of the camper.
As I wasn’t at the coast anymore, I was prepared for a big cold night. I set up the bed with the electric blanket in a sort of mini-burrito configuration which trapped in the heat well.
Dinner that night was some leftover sausages and eggs with some instant ramen. It turned out pretty good, and the cooker warmed up the camper a little as well.
When I eventually went to bed and turned off the stereo that had been playing some background music, I discovered that Major’s Creek features dogs barking all night. It seemed like a common occurrence as well, as no one yelled at the dogs or brought them inside, and the dogs barking were coming from all around the town.
Then at 5am I discovered Major’s Creek also has roosters. Loud ones.
That morning Rosie texted me the Major’s Creek current temperature – I was snugged up in bed with it being -5 degrees outside. Strangely it didn’t seem that cold compared with camping at Orroral Valley the other week.
Eventually I dragged myself out of bed and packed up the camper. Instead of going along the Kings Highway back to Canberra, I chose to travel down a dirt road to Captain’s Flat, and then from there heading directly to Queanbeyan. This was a great alternate route back home, with lovely scenery in the frosty morning.
Overall I had a great time off by myself. Set up and pack up is quick and simple without a 5yo running around, but on the other hand bloody quiet and it turns out I don’t mind having a chat around a fire rather than just using it to cook and keep warm by myself. Here’s hoping Rosie and Ollie make it on my next trip 🙂
Boring technical stuff
If you’re ever cold weather camping and you have the battery power, I definitely recommend a simple 12v electric blanket. For one person it’s perfect, though if you have a whole family to think about a diesel heater is probably the way to go. Our blanket came from Kmart, uses about 4A on the low setting and was quite cheap.
The little Darche folding firepit was a great addition to our camping kit (thanks Rosie!). Even if there are previous firepits or just pre-scorched ground at individual campsites, having a little firepit has a lot of benefits:
- It means you don’t breathe in any fumes for any nasty stuff people have left behind
- You use less wood because of the smaller size
- It’s warmer because it’s off the ground and closer to you
- It’s easier to light and maintain as there is constant airflow from beneath
- With a grill attachment, it’s easy to cook on
- It doesn’t burn or scorch the ground underneath it
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