A Bit Soggy Underfoot
Everyone loves the sound of raindrops on a tin roof, right? How about when the raindrops turn into a ceaseless torrent that pours forth from the sky the whole night through? Not so much. We woke this morning to severe weather warnings and the imminent threat of floods. Rossco checked the weather app and reported that the East Gippsland area was particularly bad. “East Gippsland?”, I said. “Where’s that?”
Turns out we were in East Gippsland. Oh.
Whenever someone says “don’t panic”, you know you probably should be panicking. In a flurry of activity, six bodies were suddenly vying for the one tiny little bathroom and trying to frantically stuff their belongings into bags. Ross and Sam were a two-man team, raincoated-up, braving the elements, avoiding the puddles, ferrying our bags from the cabin to the trailer with pace and purpose. Molly and I were dragging the chain and competing for the prize of being the last one ready. I think it was a dead heat. With the rivers rising, we needed to get going.
Our destination today was Lakes Entrance, about a two and a half hour drive from Mallacoota, and Ross took the wheel as we sloshed down the highway. A digital road sign urging campers to “Extinguish Your Campfire With Water’ made us chuckle, as the deluge continued. Looks like God had taken care of that.
It’s so hard to believe that this time two years ago, this whole area was a blazing inferno, with daily temperatures soaring. In the devastating bushfires of 2019/2020, 24 million hectares of land was consumed by fire, 3000 homes were destroyed and the staggering number of native animals either killed or displaced was over three billion! Now, here we were - the predicted top temperature for today a mere 14 degrees - scrambling to find every piece of the limited warm clothing we’d packed, on the slim, off chance we’d need it, splashing around in the rain. La Niña indeed.
Our brekky stop was Cann River - which to me sounds like something from a Netflix rom-com series. Cann River had a plethora of cafes and bakeries to choose from. The one that was closest to the car looked like a good option to me, since it was absolutely bucketing down and our umbrellas would have required days of excavation to retrieve, buried a few layers down in the car boot dig site. Sam diligently checked the Trip Advisor ratings, cross-matched with his coffee-rating apps, triple checked against the Lonely Planet coffee guide to Australia…and informed us that the cafe that was just a bit further away (a longer run in the soaking rain) actually had a one-star-higher-rating than the one that was close. We simply had to get our coffee there. While they waited for coffee, Molly and I ventured across the road to the Relics coffee shop/Bit of Everything store to get some raisin toast. A plaque proudly hanging in the doorway, informed us that Julie and Ronnie Mustard took out the 2018 Cann River Pumpkin Growing Challenge with a whopping 49.8kg pumpkin. Talk about cutting the mustard. They were pipped at the pumpkin post in 2019 though, by Fred and Kerry Marchi with their incredible home grown produce - weighing in at an impressive 95.5kg - almost double the size of Julie and Ronnie’s. The mind boggles at just how big the winner will be next year.
Ross was spinning the tunes in the car today and one album, that he excitedly discovered during the year and that has enjoyed considerable airtime on his speakers, featured heavily on his playlist of top songs of 2021. The band is ‘Me First And the Gimme Gimmes’ and they play punk versions of all your favourite standard songs. Think: Sweet Caroline, Leaving On A Jet Plane, Rocket Man…but punk. Driving along today, we would see the name of a song come up on the display and think, “oh great, I love this song”, only to find it had been covered and punkified with a cracking tempo inserted, almost too fast to bang your head to. John Denver must have been rolling in his grave.
The coffee I got, despite the rave reviews and the extra star (who can you trust?) was not great. It was so bad in fact, I couldn’t drink it and was left with the dilemma of what to do with it. “Just throw it out the window Mum” came urgings from the back seat. Reluctantly, as we hurtled down the highway, I opened my window to hurl it out and it came right back at me. I ended up wearing most of it up my sleeve. The rest of it splattered all over Molly’s back window. Some things you have to learn the hard way.
As we slushed into the little (wet) holiday town of Lakes Entrance, Molly’s latest catch cry: “imagine how nice this place would be if it was sunny!” had never rung more true. It was such a cute little town. The lake running along the main street had fishing trawlers along its shoreline, parked next to one another like cars in a carpark. The other side of the street was lined with fish and chip shops, restaurants, variety stores selling buckets and spades, beach towels, fishing rods and hats and putt-putt golf with a fishy theme. Much to Toby’s delight there was not only a KFC, but a Maccas too AND a gourmet doughnut shop. Even in the pouring rain, the town was oozing with summer holiday vibes. All we needed now was some summer holiday weather.
Too early to check-in to our accommodation, we dropped our bags, dug out our umbrellas and wandered down into the main street. (“Wandered” probably isn’t the right word). As we were buffeted by gale force winds and driving rain; heads down, umbrellas as shields, we ploughed on, towards the bridge that sits astride the lake and leads to the ocean beach. A group of black swans paddled in the shallows of the lake, seemingly unperturbed by the tumultuous weather conditions. As we approached the sand, Toby came back down the dune, waving his arms wildly, instructing us in his best sign language to put down our umbrellas. The violent, battering winds had done a swift job in destroying Maisy’s umbrella. It had been turned inside out one too many times. If we didn’t want to lose them all, Toby told us, we needed to fold those bad boys up fast.
It was a beautiful beach (sure, a lot nicer on a sunny day) and as we looked out into the wild surf, we realised we were looking straight out towards Tasmania. This was the Bass Strait!
Our afternoon was spent, as you can imagine, tucked safely in our cosy unit watching the cricket (or various other screens) before dinner at the pub, where some local “Sou’ East Sailor’s Draught” was sampled, Maisy triumphantly devoured a ‘parma’ the size of her head and the waiter was insulted by a request from my spice-loving husband to please add more chilli to the Vindaloo.
