20 April, 2024

Day 35: Grants Lagoon to Dora Point

We had a visitor towards the end of this day.
A pademelon, which looks quite like a wallaby,
except a bit stockier with a shorter tail.
Our free-free campsite at Grants Lagoon was just one of about half a dozen in close proximity on the coast at Bay of Fires, north of St Helens. Seeing as there seemed to be few camping and no bookings or fees, we decided to pack up and drive around the bay, looking at the sights and seeing if another campsite appealed for the next night. Grants Lagoon was nice, but unless you were planning to swim or kayak, there was not a lot to do or see in the immediate vicinity of where we'd spent the night.

So we drove north as far as the road would take us, to a place curiously called "The Gardens". No, there aren't many gardens there now, but legend has it that it was called that by one of the early influential women who found the area had many wildflowers. At The Gardens there was a short walk/rock scramble where we got our first glimpse of the Bay of Fires. Very beautiful!

More stunning sand and clear water
After that we drove south a little bit, parked, and walked to the end of Taylors Beach and back (a bit over an hour). Then we ate lunch and explored the various free campsites between there and St Helens, settled on one near Binalong Bay township, accessible via a relatively rough dirt road. The campsite was called Dora Point in the Humbug Point Nature Recreation Area. Again, a sparsely populated campsite with no facilities except flushing loos and fenced-off campsites.
A common feature in this section of the coast is
this orange lichen on rocks. 


We went for another walk out to the ocean. My phone said at the end of this day I'd walked nearly 12 km. 

Taylors Beach



We made apple crumble from scratch 
(I cut up the apples and stewed them and
David made the crumble and baked it in our
little oven. It felt like an accomplishment.

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