Day 50-53 - Coolangatta - Hervey Bay
Trip Start
Nov 29, 2007
1
42
70
Trip End
Mar 27, 2008
Hervey Bay,
Australia
Thursday, January 17, 2008
After a whole day spent travelling, we ended up in Hervey's bay which is a beautiful little place. The beach is huge (I don't think they have any small ones in Australia) and we manged to get an entire apartment on the esplanade, right opposite the beach for the same price that we paid for that nasty hostel in Sydney.
Bay View Court holiday apartments are lovely and the friendly owners are so nice and welcoming. We have two bedrooms, a kitchen with full cooker and oven, a lounge with seating, TV and everything. We even have an iron. I was so excited to have a full kitchen that the first thing we did was go to the supermarket and get stocked up on all the ingredients for a slap-up, home cooked roast dinner.
We had a lovely evening sat on the settee, watching a film and having a few drinks. It sounds sad, but it was fantastic. This has been the first time I've missed our little house. It was just so nice to have a space that we could lounge around in and cook whatever we like. Later that evening (well, more like the early hours of the next morning) we went for another one of our late-night walks on the beach. There were a couple fishing down there, they had each got a rod but they also had lines set aswell. We had only been there five minutes and they caught a huge stingray. It was massive and we both had a good look at it on the beach, the couple showed us where it's barb is (it is quite long) and I couldn't help thinking about Steve Irwin, poor bloke. They took the hook out and put it back in the sea and yes, it did swim away, unharmed. Well, I say unharmed - how the hell should I know? I'm not a fish, it probably has sore gums I would think.
About five minutes later, they had another big fish on the line and this time it was a shovel nosed shark. Again, it was absolutely huge, about five feet long. When it was on the beach, we had a good look at it and we both stroked it. Like a dogfish, it's skin is smooth if you stroke one way and like sandpaper if you stroke the other way although it is not as sandpapery as a dogfish. The fisherman who caught it told us it was a female and showed us how you can tell. Wow! I've spent hours with Dean on countless cold and rainy beaches throughout England and Wales while he caught a couple of fish (and none very exciting), or sometimes, none at all. I never knew fishing could be this exciting or this quick. Now I'm getting worried about Dean dipping his rod in there in case he gets something like that on the end of it. He reassured me by telling me he only has a 15 pound line on his reel and there is no way he could land something that big without snapping his line. I was reassured for about five minutes when he started muttering about buying a bigger line. Whatever.
We left the couple to it and went back to our apartment both wishing we had taken the camera out with us. Oh and by the way, the shark (although we were assured is very good to eat) was released back into the sea, hook removed and swam away with sore gums.
The next afternoon, Dean had a go at fishing with his new rod. There were quite a few on the beach already fishing, but this is the case on every beach in Australia it seems. The Aussie's love their fishing and a lot of women fish here. We have frequently seen whole families, each with a rod in their hand, some children as young as five. It was a beautiful sunny day and I sat on the beach reading, waiting for something to happen. Dean has a friend, a big pelican has been stood patiently by his side all the time he has been fishing. I thought it might try and take the bait out of the bag but it doesn't seem interested in it. He caught a small fish, it has sharp spines on it which draw blood if you touch them so he had to handle it with a cloth. As soon as Dean hooked the fish out of the water, the bird was after it which made for a comical scene as he attempted to scare it away by flicking a teatowel at it while trying to rescue the hooked fish. The bird seemed unfazed by the teatowel and was onley interested in the prize which Dean managed to unhook. He took it down to the sea so it could swim away, but sadly, it didn't swim fast enough and as soon as it was in the sea the pelican gobbled it up after all. The bird stuck close by Dean's side for the whole time after that and he caught a couple more small fish.
We went back to our apartment where I had cooked roast beef, roast potatoes, broccolli, carrots and gravy. It was absolutley heavenly, a proper roast dinner. It's funny how that's the kind of thing you most miss being away from your home and staying in different places all the time.
We had such a lovely time in Hervey bay, we stayed there three nights and ate some great home-cooked food. I wish we could have stayed there longer, it is such a beautiful and calm bay and a really nice place we had to stay in. On our last night we went down to the beach for the last time on one of our midnight jaunts. The beach was deserted, the tide was well out and it was almost a full moon. The moon was low and directly above the water, there was a beautiful moonbeam spread across the water towards us. It was so absolutely gorgeous, the water was as calm as a mill pond. Dean stood behind me and put his arms around me and we just stood there for a while, holding each-other on that lovely moonlit beach- it was incredibly romantic. It was the perfect end to our three-day stopover in lovely Hervey Bay, a special place that will hold on our hearts for years to come.
