Mallacoota, Dec'18
And so I arrived in Mallacoota, 25k off the highway through the Croajingolong national park.
I spent two weeks with a gorgeous host family I met through HelpX. A website very similar to the well know wwoofing one, where you can find hosts to work for food and accomodation all over the world.
Personally I've only used HelpX in Australia, but my brother worked through the site in Canada and another friend wwoofd his way through France. It's a great concept if you ask me, an easy way to save money while traveling and most of all to gain so real local experiences across the world.
So I found myself living in a beautiful small community once again, and this time I was there for Chrissy.
So Mallacoota has just over a thousand permanent residents in the community, a pretty small town in other words. But over the Christmas and easter holidays it transforms completely and it seems to stretch out to host an additional 8 thousand people (!). Many of these are families that have been spending the holidays here for generations. It was quite the experience to see the town transform from this quite little fishing town into a bustling holiday resorts, thankfully just as quaint though.
Anyway, I was very lucky to have found such an adventurous family to live with as they took me on loads of adventures after work (which was always easy going).
They showed me around the beautiful coast lines with beautiful beaches and rugged cliffs alike.
We went mountain biking and 4WD'ing through the surrounding national park. I hadn't gone mountain biking since forever and certainly not at such a decent level, needless to say I internally died a couple of times haha! But I absolutely loved the exercise and the trail views were definitely worth (almost) dying for ! :p
I'd always wanted to go full on 4WD'ing and this experience taught me so much about how to actually do it. Most of all it made me feel quite happy about not attempting it at 18 with my poor little AWD through the ruthless Aussie outback, back in 2015 lol.
But as I was with my host who's an experienced 4WD'er with all the knowledge and equipment you could ask for I had the best experience.
Included that half an hour or so of sawing we had to do to get that big stick out from underneath the car. :p
Some days we went out for a sunset boat ride on the lakes and others we just chilled at home in the warm summer sun.
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| Butt rock |
The other day we went on a little road trip to Buchan, a tiny town known for it's lime stone caves and other outdoor adventure activities being so close to the Snowy River national park. We went chasing a waterfall, did some 4WD'ing through the national park and ended the day with a great pub meal.
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| Snowy River just visible between the trees down below |
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| icy cold and blue waters off Gabo Island |
And on other days we went boating to neighbouring Gabo and Tullaburga islands.
Fun fact!
Gabo island beautiful pink lighthouse and stands as the second tallest lighthouse in Australia with it's almost 47meters.
I also spend Christmas with my beautiful host family.
And it was fabulous ! prepared loads and loads of food all morning, the girls bakes fresh ginger bread and we made gingerbread everything the day before. We ate a big *ss ham leg 3 different kinds of salads with goats cheese, croutons and cherries, with prawns kale and mangoes and with fresh smoked salmon and sweet potato rösties. Fresh BBQ prawns and a cheese platter and to top it all off we had a passionfruit crêpe cake, chocolate cherry trifle and a huge classic red fruit pav for dessert as dinner.
It was a great feast and ended it on the beach where the girls taught me to boogie board whilst trying to avoid stepping on the rays.
Safe to say I had an awesome chrissy this year in true aussie spirit and warmth. And even though I felt truely blessed to have been able to spend chrissy with such a great, loving family I really missed my own big warm family around me. There's just really nothing like having two big Christmas parties with 30+ family members around you on both days. So I promised my mom, dad, siblings and myself I'd be home again for next Christmas.
In the meantime it was time for me to get moving again and head north on another epic little roadtrip towards my new (horsey) destination close to Port Macquarie.
More adventures soon !!
xoxo Liz
