Yamba NSW August 27th 2024

Yamba NSW August 27th 2024

Easy run down to Yamba. Found our spot in the park and went up to town for lunch. Had a bit of a wander around to reacquaint ourselves with Yamba and the bits and pieces around the place.

Angourie Back Beach, Angourie NSW

Yamba main beach and pool, Yamba NSW

Fog rising over Yamba Marina, Yamba NSW

Did some stuff: ‘History’ Ferry Cruise - 4 hours of nothing, it would have been boring of you could have heard the commentary. Took 2 hours to cover about 5 nautical miles from the park to the highway bridge. And just a complete rip-off. You can't bring food or drink on board, but they will gladly sell you a sandwich in a plastic for $10 and a can of drink for five. Parkrun - great little run along the river front, pretty hot and humid though. Angourie Back Beach my favourite - 630 am deserted, heaven on earth, a run in the car out to Lawrence and Bushgrove, touched Grafton and came car through Maclean.

I wanted to go to Bushgrove mostly because it featured in a great pamphlet thing  marine chart we picked up which was about cruising on the Clarence River. It waxed lyrical about the wonder of having lunch on the deck overlooking the broad expanse of the river etc etc. The pub itself, including the covered patch of dirt on the river bank were ok, but far from the rhetoric of the glossy brochure. We did get to cross the river though, twice, on a vehicular ferry, which is a bit quaint these days.

Vehicular Ferry, Lawrence, Clarence River, NSW

Lunchtime viewing area, Bushgrove Hotel, NSW

The view from the said viewing platform 

Actually a highlight was lunch at Maclean where we ‘discovered’ the Botero Coffee Roasters and Cafe. Exellenent lunch, great coffee

Botero Roastery, Maclean NSW

The Caravan park was ‘nice’, until the 10,000 young persons with all their children and all their toys turned up n Friday. You can hear the kiddies starting to mumble and grumble from six am, then at 7 am sharp they throw all the van and cabin doors open and the kiddies erupt out onto their scooters and bikes, yelling and screaming at each other and moaning about this and that... and it doesn’t stop until 7 at night when thankfully they all go to sleep. 

And then there was the pool or pools, only one heated is the swim-up bar, and you can imagine what that was like! But the others, including the water play areas are decidedly cool. The main pool is really nice, just cold. Not frigid, just not a pleasant place to get in and splash around. Good for lap swimming though if you were brave enough to tough it out. One one or two brave souls, including me, used it as our own private pool all week... until Saturday. The temperature soared to 35° by 9 o’clock and a hot sweltering wind picked up. All of a sudden the “freezing” pool was the place to be! And then the power went off. Not just the van park, but all of Yamba. Came back on about three o’clock, so all the air-conditions could be brought back on-line.

Judy did some fishing from the end of the van park pier and caught all kinds of baby fish, biggest one was a 30cm flathead. All consigned back to their watery habitat for next year.

We will go back, we’ll just make sure it’s not on the weekend, especially a Fathers’ day one or the like.