MONDAY NOVEMBER 18     SUTTON TO MORUYA     195kms

Left the park at 10am and fuelled up at the adjacent servo. $1.587 cpl. Before leaving, I’d phoned ahead and booked us into a place for tonight.

Took the road straight to Queanbeyan, missing the Canberra central city. Thence via Bungendore to Braidwood. This section of road was more hilly than I’d remembered, but was alright. On previous stays, we had travelled out as far as Braidwood, but not beyond.

So the trip down the Clyde Mountain to Batemans Bay was new territory. The descent was alright in Bus, with its exhaust brakes. In fact, Bus did beautifully. I noticed that the red light indicating the inertia braking for Terios was on for quite a bit of the way.

I would not have liked to be going down Clyde Mountain with the van. We passed two different 4WD vehicles stopped beside the road, pointing uphill, with bonnets up, presumably cooling off engines. There was also a hot brake smell on a couple of sections. We resolved that, if ever coming up that way with the rig, we would separate the vehicles and drive the Terios independently.

At the base of the range, Nelligen looked really pretty and could be a really pleasant place to stay on a future trip.

We aimed to get to Moruya this afternoon, because our camping friends V and F (who we’d camped with back in September) were staying in a house there, with V’s sister and brother-in-law, whom we’d also worked with at Adels Grove, years ago. I texted V and we were heading into Moruya.

We went into a powered site at the Riverbreeze Tourist Park at Moruya. $27 for the site, after discount. Set up, had lunch. The park was very good. Excellent, modern, large amenities. Prime sites were ones overlooking the river, but they were all full. Ours was spacious, and we were able to keep Terios hooked  up to Bus.

The afternoon was sunny, but cool.

I phoned ahead and booked us an en-suite site at Tathra for a couple of nights.

Our friends turned up for afternoon tea – just tea/coffee and biscuits. Today was F’s birthday. We talked for a couple of hours and went for a walk around the park – for their future reference.

After they had gone, John and I were sitting outside, with Couey tethered on her rope so she could reach us, which she likes. I’d put her chew bone on her portable bed, to give her something to do.

A woman from the neighbouring van brought her toddler daughter and asked if she could pat Couey. She knew of the stumpy breed. Dog was very gentle with the child. We had noticed before how good she is around little kids. Then while that was happening and we were chatting with the mum, a moronic older man who was walking past, suddenly brought his smaller fox terrier type of dog across and let it have a sniff of Couey’s bone. Absolutely idiotic thing to do, apart from being very rude. Couey’s reaction was really interesting: as the terrier approached, she put herself between the little girl and the intruding dog, and guarded the kid, rather than defending her bone. After us all being initially dumbfounded, we let the man know, in no uncertain terms, what we thought of him.

Tea was pasta with bottled pesto.