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Being the beach lovers that we are it didn't take long for us to migrate back to the coast to check out the beaches in southern new south wales. The first stop was Batemans Bay about 3 hours from Canberra. We arrived around lunchtime and checked into the hotel and were delighted to find that it was one of the nicer hotels we had stayed in and it had sky tv which I didn't even think they got in Australia! We were starving so the first stop was the supermarket for picnic supplies to take to the beach. Bateman's bay is known as the gateway to the beaches with 86 beaches running from the bay down the south east coast. We quickly assembled a picnic and headed to the closest beach which happened to be in a lovely bay called Denham Bay which gave some shelter from the breeze! We had a nice lunch of squashed sandwiches that had been crushed and frozen by the cool pack in our cool bag falling on top of them resulting in something that resembled a bread and ham crepe washed down with average tasting tap water (I hate post Christmas diets)! We spent the rest of the afternoon soaking up the sun and reading our books before the sun disappeared behind storm clouds around 4pm and we had to make a desperate dash to the car to avoid being washed away! The next morning and the storm hadn't cleared the clouds so after watching back to back rugby on sky sports all morning I eventually dragged Michael to the car to take in one of the scenic drives around the area. We ended up in the old gold rush town of Mogo about 10km south of Bateman's bay. All the buildings are either original building from the late 19th, early 20th century or are built in a similar style resulting in a feeling of stepping back in time when you enter the town. The whole town was heaving with tourists so we eventually found a parking space and set off to explore the town on foot. The first shop we came across was a fantastically bizarre collection of old second hand crap mixed in with the odd new item all displayed in a variety of old glass cabinets, chest of drawers and dressing tables! At one point I opened a drawer in the dresser to find loads of old corsets and pantaloons the only thing weirder was the next drawer down that was filled with odd gloves to cater perfectly for the mass of one handed people in the world! It was crazy and so much fun to look around! They had a koala tea cozy made from a real skinned koala it was the creepiest grossest thing I have ever seen perched on top of a teapot. I could talk for hours about the treasure trove of junk in this shop and the only reason I had to leave was because Michael has asthma and within 10 minutes he was like wheezy the penguin from toy story and I fear he may have passed away if we had stayed any longer! The rest of the street was a mix of asthma inducing antique shops, gift shops jewelers and lets not forget the token ye olde sweet shop and fudge factory professing to make the "world's best fudge"! After taking in the town it was back to Doc Browns time machine to travel back to 2009!Thank goodness the next day and our final day in Bateman's Bay was sunny so we packed up our cool bag with crepe sandwiches and tap water to head in search of another lovely beach to chill out for the day. Whilst there are 86 beaches along the coast there are only a select number that are patrolled by the surf life saving club who monitor the waters including the tides, the swimmers and more importantly they are in constant touch with the shark watch helicopters flying constantly overhead and with 4 shark attacks in the last 2 weeks I was keen to have someone keeping an eye on the water on my behalf! Not surprisingly it didn't take long and with the sight of the surf rescue red and yellow flags we pulled up the car at surf beach. It was a very good choice with beautiful white sand and whilst there was a little surf it wasn't enough to deter me from dipping my toe in the water for a cool down when it got a little too hot! All in all we had a lovely day and with temperature in the high twenties, early thirties we had to drag ourselves away when we had had enough sun hoping that there was more good weather to come as we made our way further down the coast!
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