Merimbula 2

The time changed here on Saturday night, so we are now just 14 hours ahead of our friends in Ontario, and we got that delightful extra hour of sleep! John went out Sunday morning with Fiona, who we are staying with, in the sea kayaks. The girls and I had a leisurely morning, and when they returned, we went down to the marina near Fiona's and had a lovely walk on the boardwalk, most of the way into Merimbula and back.

After a coffee break we packed our things and went to Merimbula Bar, which is where the river empties into the Pacific, and had a walk around. Merimbula has a large lake, as they call them here, at the mouth of the river, with lots of sand and sand bars that appear as the tide goes out; the river channel snakes around in large curves as it comes past the sandbar out of the wide lake. On our walk back along the sand after exploring a bit and wading out to one of these isolated sand 'islands' there was a couple that had been out fishing, and the gentleman was cleaning the fish. There were seagulls flying around, but then the pelicans started arriving. I've seen pelicans from afar in Canada, and lots here, but never up close - they are so much bigger than I thought, nearing one metre tall! They have really neat, big, cartoon-ey eyes and bills, very thick legs and big webbed feet, both of which are blue! When they land, they stick both feet out in front of themselves and land feet first on water or land. There were probably about 20 pelicans around us, and the fisherman even let Rachel throw a fish head to them.





























Once back at our car, we drove around to Rotary Park for a final barbeque with the exchange teachers and their families. On our way back to Batemans Bay, we stopped in Mystery Bay for a look around. It was a lovely sandy bay, but with lots of big rocky outcrops right on the beach and in the water, very different from the rest of the bays and beaches around here. The sky was darkening with rainclouds, so the lighting and colours were beautiful.