Despite how wet it was on Saturday we still managed to get out for a short walk across the bridge to the village of Genoa. Mainly just a pub, with a few houses close by. At the pub we bought some tonic water and Stephen asked to have our small water bottle filled. The 5 litre one. I had to walk back to the van to get cash for the tonic water, but I felt we owed the manager something for being kind enough to give us some drinking water.
It rained most of the day and we enjoyed listening to the rain on the van. I cooked us a lentil stew type of thing with spices and canned tomato. Comfort food.
The problem with drinking water and our toilet is that we weren’t quite prepared for the two night stopover. I could have emptied the toilet at the Cann River stop, but thought we could easily go another night. The toilet was indicating some red when we arrived at our camping spot yesterday and Stephen carried the cassette over to the dump point, which was in a rather inaccessible spot.
We stopped in Eden, just over the NSW border for shopping and lunch. It is a beautiful seaside village, with lots of bays and a beach with very strong waves. After the shopping we went to a lookout, then down to the beach for lunch.
Our destination was Bega, which has showgrounds camping with power and water for $25 per night. It also has a laundry and when I told the caretaker I wanted to do some washing he took us to a spot close to it. This was a great blessing as I tend to go backwards and forwards during washing and it was only a short journey. It had a normal domestic washing machine and dryer, good quality, and as noone else seemed to want to do washing I did two loads and got everything clean. Very satisfying.
It’s still very hilly in this part of NSW. The Princes Highway is mostly well maintained, but with some disconcerting patches at the edges which can catch you out, especially in our van with it’s less than stellar suspension. So, not only are we going up and down steep slopes, but we can’t rely on the road to be smooth. Annoying! Residents of Eden and Bega must get very fit if they walk around the town with the steep hills.