Judy & Brian Tour Oz: Narooma NSW, Australian Fur Seal, Stingray, Mill Bay Boardwalk

Egad! Our penultimate day on the loose. What is a body to do? These bodies decided to take a little run up the coast to Narooma.

The first thing you notice is how much the place has changed in the last few years, especially around the main tourist area. Big wide road, roundabouts, off street parking. First we had a poke around Black Bream Point, where we spent a few days back in 2002 when we had the boat. Black Bream Point is the name of the cabins and the point out on the back lake where we stayed. It's still there, which surprised me a bit and even seems to be a bit more up market than before, and certainly the prices have moved northward. Our favourite memory was cruising around the lake and going over to the cafes on the other side for lunch. Is there anything more satisfying than tieing up your boat at the cafes own jetty before strolling in for lunch and coffee?

But Narooma to me means the breakwater and the bar and the rock with the Australia like hole in it. We drove around and were wandering out along the breakwater when we stopped next to a small group of people gawping at something down on the water line. Blow me down if there wasn't one but at least seven Australian Fur Seals who appear to have take up residence here. Why go to Montague Island? They are right here at you feet. Took a million snaps, went to the end of the breakwater and back, took 10,000 more snaps, especially when one big old bull pulled himself out of the water and demanded 'his' private rock back from some other interloper. Much roaring flapping of flippers and posturing. He won though and the impostor slowly backed off and took to the water for a swim. They don't just swim, they roll about and do back stroke and just play about.

I took the obligatory snap or 2 of my rock hole and then we went for lunch, which we bought at the local choke-snd-puke and took down to the wharf where the charter boats moor. Judy hadn't even turned the engine off before the gulls were sitting on the roof and on the bonnet and pecking away at the windows. We flipped the wipers at them and they took off, but the cheek! Talk about spoiling the fauna by feeding them. if you do, please don't.

My hunger satisfied, I jumped out and strolled onto the wharf. I had been there a minute when a passerby cried out that there was a seal under the wharf! Sure enough there it was, and as we watched it's game became obvious: swim up the river a bit, then float back down in the swift running current, twisting and tossing and flapping about. Just like a big kid.

As we went to pull out, our way was blocked by a horse and coach! Not exactly what you'd expect to see these day.

We had to check out the other side of the bar, so around we went and parked out past Bar Beach, near the breakwater. There was this bloke there who was flying one of those 4 engined helicopter drone things. He claimed it was his sons and had only flown it a few times, but he looked pretty comfortable with it as it zoomed up and down the river, hopefully getting video of the very same seals we had seen.

We were just about to turn back toward 'home' when we stopped instead to have a look at the water up toward the bridge. First thing we saw was another seal, playing all this way up the river. We though we might as well finish the day by walking along the Mill Bay Boardwalk, that runs for 800 metres back toward the boat ramp. It's really delightful. There were even some fish in the water (tiny tiny mind you but more than we've seen anywhere else). As we turned around for the return to our car, we spotted a stingray cruising along just below feet, so we followed it and took some snaps until it slid into the depths out of sight.

All in all a pretty decent penultimate day I'd reckon.

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