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Day 56 - Rainbow Beach.
I've been very slack with the blogging lately but here is the latest update.
After spending nearly two weeks in Coffs Harbour we moved on to Nymboida where we stayed at the Nymboida Canoe Centre. We loved Nymboida and without realising had timed our stay to coincide with the Paddle NSW Staton Slalom Championships. I am now a creekside expert on the scoring and sport of kayaking and canoeing in rapids!
The rapids are created by the output from the Nymboida Hydro-electric power station which takes water from the Nymboida river, runs it through the hydro power station and then pushes is out into Goolang Creek which creates great rapids for white water rafting, canoeing, and kayaking.
Then canoe centre allows camping and you can basically camp anywhere you like on the property which is the style of camping that we like. It's much nicer doing this than being in a designated site with somebody else only meters away from you.
Over the weekend that the championships were held we were camping near another family whose two girls placed 1st and 2nd in the championships and are looking like serious contenders for the Olympic team. They currently train at the AIS and look like they are going places in the sport.
We were really lucky with the weather at Nymboida. It had apparently been raining quite constantly for a few weeks up until our arrival. Once we arrived we had little to no rain until morning we were leaving which meant I got more than a little wet doing the final pack-up and hitching up to the car!
From the Nymboida we headed into Yamba for 5 days. Although we have been to Yamba before it's probably the first place we have been to on this trip that I would probably not go to again. Whilst there is nothing wrong with Yamba it's just not a particularly inviting town and the landscape is okay but nothing that really stands out from some of the other landscape we have seen. For some reason it also tends to be a town where the people are just a bit indifferent and not particularly friendly.
Next it was back to home turf in QLD and up to Mt Tamborine for a one night stop-over to break up the drive to Rainbow Beach. About 10kms away from Mt Tamborine is where we had the first mechanical issue of the trip. One of the two U-bolts that hold the spare wheel carrier on the back of the caravan sheared off so the spare wheel and kids bikes that are attached to it started swinging and we risked losing the spare wheel and bikes falling off totally. Fortunately we were alerted to the problem by a passing motorist so we pulled over and in the rain had to take off the bikes and spare wheel. We put the bikes and spare wheel inside the caravan and secured them as best we could and drove into Underwood to try and find somewhere that could fix the bracket for us. To cut a long story short we managed to get the bracket repaired and after a few hours put the spare wheel and bikes back on and headed up to Mt Tamborine... we only lost 5 hours!!!
We have stayed at Mt Tamborine before but this time it was purely as a stop-over so we didn't even unhook the caravan from the car. This meant that the next morning (and after a night of constant, heavy rain) we could just get up and drive off.
The next morning we headed off at about 9am and did the drive that we have done several times in the past, up to Rainbow Beach and to our usual destination. We have been lucky to get quite a good area and tomorrow we will be joined by Mum and Dad for a week or so. It will be nice to have some company and the girls are really looking forward to having Nana and Pa here. So far the weather has been better than anticipated with rain only at nights however according to the forecast that may be about to change for the worst.
That's about it for now.......I'll try not to leave it so long until the next update.
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