St Helens

Saturday morning is market day in St Helens, so we ambled along in the morning to have a look at it and to investigate the crafty shops in the town. Some wonderful stuff in the patchwork shop - Annies Crafts. Karen resisted buying anything on this occasion.
After that we returned to the site to pick up the car and drove along to Binalong Bay and onto Skeleton Point. The coast line here is part of the Bay of Fires, named as such in the 1770s by a sailor who noticed the original inhabitants' fires on shore as they passed along the bay. They have since been moved on, although everybody here apparently acknowledges their custodianship of the land and pays respect to the elders past and present .
We completed a walk along the coast passing through the bush to Grant's Point and Dora's Head- orange lichen on the rocks give the landscape its current fiery theme.
The boulders intersperse clear sandy stretches of beach which have a backdrop of the temperate rain forest. We enjoyed a thoroughly good day. We even saw an Echnida alive and well trying to cross the road in front of us at one point - it scurried off into the bush unharmed. We felt weary upon returning to the car, but had walked a total of 10 miles - so not really surprised. Back on site we moved up to the camp kitchen, ready to cook our evening meal. The kitchen was extremely busy with groups preparing meals and many outside at the wood- burning pizza oven. There was a large group of 40 plus people who had organised a pizza making competition. The pizzas produced looked pretty amazing with so many varieties - even saw some with marshmallows on top!! A judge was tasting each pizza, and results were announced at the end of the evening. A very noisy evening - but we managed to play one game of scrabble during the activities.Read more