36:49 S  149:54 E

Tathra,

then Melbourne, Lorne

 

It’s a long drive back to Melbourne.  We took Robs back via the coastal route and spent a night in a little town called Tathra.  Lots of these NSW coastal towns grew up as whaling stations and we heard 2 awful stories.  One was about a killer whale called Old Tom, in the town of Eden, who made friends with the whalers and drove other whales towards their boats to be killed, and got to eat their tongues in return for his help.  He died at a ripe old age and his skeleton is in Eden (but I am sure he isn’t in whale heaven).  The other story (true of course) was about a whaler who was swallowed by a whale.  When the whale was killed and landed they noticed a writhing in its inside and cut it open to find the whaler, just alive.  He was bleached, blind and delirious but lived to tell the tale.

 

Anyway, Tathra was a really small, quiet little town.  We took a walk and found a cliff road that was completely washed away by huge seas in 1974.  But tonight the sea was calm and we watched whales from our B and B on their journey south to feed on krill in the polar waters.

 

Then the band started, and drunken teenagers arrived in droves. they must have come from a 30 mile radius.  The place morphed into a riotous party and we went to bed to what sounded like the 9-bedded room below us getting trashed.  Up early after our snatched sleep, we carried on back to Melbourne.  We managed a lovely evening in an Italian restaurant with Robyn and the new Mr. and Mrs. Hall, a day on the beach in Lorne and a pool tournament, then it was bye bye to the 3 of them, and Sandy and I carried on alone, to start the big Australia drive.