On the wrong side of the law - twice in one day!

Well it's been an interesting day – at least it started off interesting and got progressively worse. Of course it was our own fault – if we had been keeping up with the local news we would have known that this part of Victoria had been ravaged by bush fires and would have kept well away. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

My last entry had left me unable to walk, in a campsite at Boydtown just outside the small town of Eden. Sandra went to the local pharmacy and returned – after a prolonged visit to the whaling museum – laden with items guaranteed to cure my attack of Infra-patellar Burstitis – ibuprofen, icepack, knee bandage to keep the icepack in place and ice gel. Whilst not miracle cures they all seemed to help and I am now a bit more mobile – although I am of course still persuading Sandra to do a bit more of the kneeling down chores.

The day started by us doing a runner. We owed $54 in camp fees but the place was deserted, we couldn't find anyone to pay and there wasn't an honesty box – so we scarpered, hoping that there was no CCTV noting our registration number. After her visit to the Whaling Museum Sandra wanted to visit the site of the whaling station set a few miles away on a beautiful inlet. Little remained - but a few information boards and a lot of imagination revealed that catching and processing whales was a dangerous and smelly occupation. The process of reducing the blubber to oil seemed particularly revolting.

Site of whaling station

An interesting, and possibly unique, partnership had developed between the whalers and a pod of killer whales. Whenever large whales were close to shore the killer whales harried them towards the land and alerted the whalers that they were there for the harpooning. Their reward for their part in the killing of the larger whales was first dibs at the carcass – from which they only ate the tongue and the lips leaving the rest to be hauled away by their erstwhile partners. Fascinating stuff.

Benjamin Boyd's lookout tower
Yet another Folly by a Scotsman

From the whaling station on to Boyd's Lookout. Benjamin Boyd, a Scottish entrepreneur, had set up Boydtown to hopefully rival Sydney. It didn't – but one of the striking remains is a tower perched on a headland used as a spotting post to look for whales. When Boydtown didn't develop as hoped he hightailed to California to look for gold instead!

We decided to head for the Errinundra National Park where we hoped to find somewhere to camp for a night or two. Stopping for lunch at White Rock Picnic Area, we passed through the small town of Delegate then sneaked over the Victoria border by a dirt track and arrived at an even smaller town called Bendoc. On the way we stopped at the Delegate River Tunnel – a relic of the gold mining days. Teams of Chinese labourers had been used to cut a tunnel at a bend in the river thus diverting the river and leaving the old river bed clear for prospectors to look for gold. It was a big job – I hope it was worth it.

Delegate River Tunnel - a small monument to mans' greed for gold

Until then all had been interesting but then we got lost – or to be more precise a combination of poor maps and roads closed because of fire led to a certain amount of disorientation! Because of the road closures we could not find a campsite and seemed to go round in ever increasing circles. Fuel was becoming a problem – the Honda is a relatively small car but with a big thirst. We now didn't have enough fuel to go back – we had to go on.

Giving up the idea of camping in the forest we decided to head for Orbost, the main town in the area and almost at the coast. Switching from old to new technology we put on the satnav and found that Orbost was 91k away and coincidentally that was about as much fuel as we had – it was going to be touch and go. Unfortunately new tech took us the same way as old tech and we duly rolled up at the road closed sign that we had turned back from hours before. This time however there was a man in some sort of uniform from whom we asked directions. He advised us to turn round and go back north into New South Wales – this was a non-starter as we didn't have enough fuel. However he then let the cat out of the bag by announcing that, although the road was closed, it was in fact passable. That was enough for us, we gatecrashed the “Road Closed Due to Fire Damage” sign and headed the 91k south for Orbost. We found out later that a series of bush fires over the previous several weeks had devastated the area and the road had been closed for weeks. Expecting to be through the worst of it in maybe 10 or 20k we were amazed at the destruction which was almost continuous for over 70k. Vast swathes of forest had been destroyed along with property left burnt out at the side of the road. Perhaps saddest of all was the poor wombat we met on the road looking totally shell-shocked and probably hungry as there was no greenery to be seen anywhere.

70 kilometres of  burnt out trees

A shell-shocked survivor of the inferno

"Hot footing" it for home - slowly!

 

One advantage of the road being closed was the total lack of traffic – the big disadvantage was the fact we felt like criminals and kept waiting for the police sirens to wail us down. I'm sure we must have violated several State and Federal laws – but it's difficult to think what we might have done different. And we still had our fuel problem.