Wednesday April 9 2014

What a difference the time change has made to us, we are usually awake and on the road earlier, because of the light.  It was dry when we started out although the tent was wet as it had rained during the night. But we stayed warm and dry.  Only a short ride today as we have a warm showers hosting us tonight in Dalmeny.

It was a fairly hilly ride, but quite nice.

We had to rejoin the A1 (Princes Highway) for about 10 kms – the shoulder was good and the traffic was not too heavy.  We stopped for lunch in Narooma and went to the Information Centre, they gave us a map that showed us the cycle route from Narooma to Dalmeny.  The cycle route was built by volunteers –  awesome.

We arrived in Dalmeny at about 1:30 and had a nice chat with our warmshowers host Allan and Marie.  After we got cleaned up and did a load of washing Allan suggested he take us for a drive of the area.  Although we had cycled through Narooma we said yes and I am so glad we did he took us to the harbor and to the “Australia” rock.  We would have never had known about this if he hadn’t taken us.

Of course we had to climb into Australia.

Then we had to climb down!!

Before dinner Ralf asked if he could play with Oscar the border collie.  Allan didn’t think Oscar would go with Ralf, but he did.  At the top of the boat ramp Oscar would stand with  the ball in his mouth, he would then put it down on the ground, hold it with his paw until he could see Ralf was ready, and then he would let it go.  Ralf’s job was to stop it, and throw it back to Oscar at the top of the boat ramp and they spent about half an hour Oscar at the top of the hill and Ralf at the bottom throwing the ball to a very intelligent dog.  Get the humans to chase the ball, it is much easier.

Before dinner was served we had an ‘interesting’ discussion over which is better Vegemite (Australian) or Marmite (English).  Marie and Allan had both – Marie prefers vegemite, Alan prefers Marmite. We had a blind taste test to see if Allan could really taste the difference.  Ralf prefers marmite, I personally think they are both disgusting.  Marie wanted to give Ralf a jar of Marmite to take with him.  I recently read that Canada has banned Marmite due to the amount of additives that are in it.  Sorry Allan I think Vegemite is better for you!!

Allan is also an avid birdwatcher.  Apparently there is a bird in Australia called the Jacky Winter.  He gave me a photocopy of the description of the bird.  They named a bird after me, even before I got here.