Aquaholics Surfing Blog

Sydney to Cann River

Posted on 03/31/2009 at 03:21 pm by Nanci Boutet Viewed 2,509 times | 0 comments

Marc finished work Tuesday, ahead of schedule. Wednesday we packed up the car and headed south on Australian Route 1. The drive was beautiful and followed the coast most of the way. We are in wine country, and the rolling hills are beautiful. Some of the fields are full of grazing kangaroos. We saw a few that had been hit along the side of the road. Kangaroos as road kill seem more common than deer.

As common as "deer crossing signs"...

The surf was mostly blown out, with wind advisories in the forecast. We’re on our way to Melbourne to visit our Kiwi friend Zane Andrews.Zane is another surfer in our New Zealand group of friends. He went to Yale, so he was a New England surfer for a while. Years ago, Whare Heke (our Maori friend New Zealand) and his wife, Ann Snyder were regulars at Kennebunk Beach. On one of their road trips they had a group of thirteen surfers. Whare and I were talking at the beach and he asked for a hotel recommendation for him and his friends. I dragged them all to my house for a pizza party. The rest is history. Pete, our friend from SurfBerbere in Morocco is one of this crew. Erin Gott is about to join the circle.

We left at around 10:00 A.M. and drove until dark, aiming for Mallacoota, 23 kms off the main highway, but supposedly there is good surf potential. When we finally arrived at 8:00 P.M. most of the hotels had “no vacancy” signs. We stopped at a little store/pub/hotel. I wanted quiet, and that didn’t look like it fit the bill. We went around the beach looking for vacancies, but found none.

We drove back out to the main road and continued south. By now it was ten P.M. We stopped at an “antique” looking hotel in Cann River. There was a rowdy looking bunch out front smoking and drinking. Marc was tired and we’d avoided one kangaroo, (as big as a medium size deer) so I thought it would be a good idea to stop here. The hotel had only one room, with a twin (small) bed, shared toilets and baths. Complete with (baby) huntsman spiders. The hotel is pretty old and run down, but full of charm and history (you have to look hard for the charm, but it’s there).

Quaint!

 

The welcome wagon

Most of the “no vacancy” signs are due to the large influx of firefighters here keeping the fires of Victoria under control.

Firefighters' boots drying by the fire

They were the crew out front drinking. I hooked up a great trade; an Aquaholics tee shirt for a “Victoria Firefighters” tee. The guy took it right off his back. Great souvenir. Today looks like the surf will be good, and it’s still dark (a little trouble sleeping). I guess I’ll wake Marc and we’ll go looking for surf -and watching out for kangaroos.

Ninety mile beach. Ninety miles of this...

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