Day 330: Estuary Excursions

The wedding yesterday was really nice, the reception was great fun and it went on until quite early this morning. We checked out of the cabins and decided it was a nice day to recover at the little estuary just south of Bermagui. The weather was great so we found a little spot on the sand beside the little river that was flowing into the ocean. Henry took a little while to come out of his shell so to speak, I think it was the feeling of walking on the sand that took him a while to get used to. Once he got past that it was like he went into hyper Henry mode to make up for the slow start. He had enormous fun running around in the sand and splashing in the water.

I went for a bit of a wander to play with the new waterproof camera and found some interesting sea slug type things on the rocks and the odd hermit crab as well. As I was walking back toward our little position by the water I noticed this octopus drifting along in the current, it drew a bit of a crowd of onlookers and I think it was actually a bit curious about the people gathering on the shore. It swam right up to the edge of the water and even stuck one of its tentacles out onto the sand. I took the advantage of  having the waterproof camera with me by sticking it in the water and trying to aim it in the right direction while pushing the shutter button. It's not that easy to aim the camera when you can't see the view finder.

I managed to get a few shots before some feral children decided that rather than watching and appreciating an experience that in all likelihood they will never have again, it was best to try and hit the mollusc with their boogie boards. All I can say is 'dickheads'. At least the octopus didn't seem terribly concerned by these brats, it just kind of casually swam off.

It wasn't too long after this that we decided to head home, Henry was exhausted and asleep within minutes of being strapped into his car seat. Belinda and I stopped in at the fisherman's wharf for a late lunch of delicious fish, scallops, calamari and chips before making the 3 hour journey home. This was a very good weekend away.

Day 308: Forgotten Camera

Today got off to a good start, Pete & Andy came to collect me at around 7am and I had some coffees in travel cups organised so we were ready to go. We loaded my gear into Andy's ute, hooked the trailer up  and hit the road.

It was roughly 45 minutes into the trip that I realised what I'd left behind. The bloody camera. Despite my best efforts to convince the guys that we should stop, unload Pete's bike and let me ride it back to retrieve the camera and I'd catch them at Nimmitabel where we could load Pete's bike back into the trailer, we decided it wasn't really worth it.

Speaking of Nimmitabel, I've been trying to get one of their famous pasties (their pies are great too) but every time I've missed out. On more than one occasion I've missed the last pastie by one customer and once the last customer was Andy. This time I was adamant that I'd get one so I jumped out of the ute when we arrived and rushed to the bakery before Pete & Andy could gazump me. On my way to the bakery I saw a guy walking out with one and thought I'd be in luck... unfortunately that wasn't the case. I'd missed the last pastie by one customer again. One of these days I'll get one...

Our next stop was for lunch at Bairnsdale where I tracked down the local Dick Smith to buy a cheap little camera to get me through the next few days without my real camera. What I ended up with was the one pictured: a FujiFilm XP thingamajig that's waterproof. I didn't really go in looking for a waterproof camera but I figured that since I was buying another camera I might as well add something to my existing photographic capability. Time will tell if it's any good.