Day Ten Friday 14th Feb 2014 Toora – Melbourne

A warm night and a pleasant morning and the smoke cloud is starting to lift. It’s hard to leave this camp at Franklin River but we farewell M & E again and return to Foster for some more of those delicious pork sausages. The drive to Fish Creek takes only a few minutes winding through undulating grazing land fringed with stands of eucalypt. This would be a perfect place to live and there are some modern homes perched on the hillsides overlooking The Prom and Corner Inlet.

Fish Creek is small with a handful of quirky old shops and the big white Fishy Pub with the fish on the roof that dominates the town. It’s too early for lunch so we go exploring Sandy Point and Shallow Inlet. Sandy Point is little more than a hamlet of beach shacks peppered amongst the ti trees. On the way to Shallow Inlet we are stopped by a chap who is concerned about the one leg on our van that hangs at a funny angle. We must fix that, it does look a little sick. He explains that the road is about to become a beach and that when the road becomes divided we must take the right fork (there are no signs) to be able to turn around. We take his priceless advice and shudder at the thought of trying to do a U-turn on a beach with a caravan. Heaven knows what one does when the tide is high. We walk onto the flat hard-packed sand of the beach. Further around the inlet, there are dozens of cars and boat trailers parked on the beach and up the sand blows. The sand is so firm they just reverse the boats into the water. A long spit runs out into the inlet. In the hazy distance are the hummocks of Wilson’s Promontory.

We lunch at the Fishy Pub with the fish on the roof. Woody’s meal was good but my Osso Bucco was a barely edible microwaved concoction of leftovers.  And so, time to go home and meet the air conditioning man.

Footnote

That was a caravan club muster we’ll never forget. Being caught just a little too close to a bushfire for comfort. Then within days of our visit the Port Albert pub which was housing firemen burns down. Whilst the bushfire embedded itself in the coal mine open cut and continued to burn for weeks.

Summary

1000kms

10 days, 9 nights Fuel $196.30, Accom $126.00 ($14.00 per night) No charge for smoke.