Day 3: Bicheno to St Helens

We started this day with a Glass Bottom Boat tour in “The gulch”. The gulch is a narrow channel that forms Bicheno’s natural harbour, about 30 metres wide and 100 metres long. Initially, I didn’t expect much, compared to the equivalent tour on the Great Barrier Reef at Green Island, but I was very wrong. Just in the gulch and a little to the south, we saw a wide variety of seaweed, and fish. In addition, we saw squid, an octopus, and a couple of different kinds of rays. We all enjoyed this trip greatly – very good value for money. We also bought some fresh fish from the fish factory at the dock.







From there we headed north towards St Helens. Many of the attractions we were interested in were still closed – for Boxing Day – rather to our surprise. One stop that was open was the Eureka Farm at Scamander. In the approach to Scamander, we’d been looking at mile after mile of burnt out forest – a real huge bush fire, and we’d been guessing at how long ago it was. Eureka farm is an orchard that sells apricots and berries and derived products, such as Jam and Ice Cream. It only just survived the fire, which was in 2007 – they had a copy of a newspaper article about the fire on the wall of the barn, and the burnt trees were all around. But enough survived for them to go on, and the fresh fruit and ice cream we bought from them were just sensational – highly recommended.

After lunch at St Helens, we made our way to Binalong Bay. This comes highly recommended, and while we could see its potential, a stiff northerly breeze was blowing, and the girls did not enjoy this beach at all. The huge jellyfish drifting up the river didn’t help at all either. So we abandoned that and drove around to the Bay of Fires. This was pretty fun in our big RV – fun for the drivers, at least, but not so much fun for the passengers, and by the time we got to the Bay of Fires, the northerly had picked up to at least 40 knots. Not fun at all.



Kath drove on the way back, and dropped me off so I could ride my bicycle back to St Helens. Not as far away from St Helens as I’d originally hoped – the wind was too foul for that, but far enough that I found a detour into a forest, crazy enough to come off on a hill and get a flat tire in the bargain. Fortunately I had remembered to pack my repair kit ;-)

Finally, we made it to our camping ground, managed to mostly unwind (except it was a washing stop). For dinner we had our fresh fish with salad, followed by a sensational fruit platter from Eureka Farm.

We really are on holiday now. But the internet – where’s our internet access? Some members of our family are pining for the internet, and it’s not the one you’d expect (though the iPhone may help!)