Day 16: unexpected stop in Bega

I slept very poorly on Wed night. Mouth pain was the issue. Our plan was to travel inland to a farm about half an hour from Jindabyne this day, but nausea and pain for the better of me. Under the left side of my jaw I developed swelling. We stopped on the way because I was nauseous and then half an hour later for lunch at Bega, which I then threw up. I discovered the regional hospital was located in this small town so decided it would be good to pay them a visit. 

We spent the whole afternoon there. 

Not an unpleasant place, but I was nauseous and tired and craving a place to lie down…but there wasn’t anywhere. I ended up curling up in a large orthopaedic chair with a high back (I couldn’t touch the floor). The doctor concluded it was probably dental problem, though the mouth xray didn’t conclusively prove that. She gave me antibiotics as a stop-gap measure because the timing and location of this was very poor. Emergency dental doesn’t seem to be an organised thing in Australia. Certainly not in rural areas. At 5.30pm Thursday we had both too few options and too many options. We could not find a dental clinic open or advertising they’d plan to be open…not in the small town of Bega, nor in the much larger (and nearest)  city of Canberra, 2.5hrs northwest. We’re still six+ hrs away from Melbourne. Our planned route was not towards larger cities at all, so we had nowhere booked for the night. Our next stop was to be a rural farm 1hr 40 away. I couldn’t face the travel that night, I barely wanted to get back into a moving vehicle again. We stopped at the local showgrounds who turned us away and there appeared to be nowhere else in town. So we made our planned stop for groceries and happened to see a vacant motel across the road. I was so relieved to crawl into a flat, stable bed!

It was definitely not my best day. I tried not to be grumpy, but definitely was anxious and frustrated. Thankfully I slept well that night. Though my appetite was poor, partly due to nausea and partly due to pain. We went to bed hoping for more clarity in the morning.