Exploring Narooma and Surrounds

15th February 2018

There is no hurry this morning as we have no morning deadline to meet, for a change. It is a much cooler day, but still windy, but little to no chance of rain. After breakfast we drove down to the river entrance, where the estuary views are always spectacular, and there is almost always a few seals there sunning themselves on the rocks.

Entrance to Narooma Estuary

A charter boat heading out to Montague Island

We saw 3 seals sun baking on the breakwall

The view  back to the Narooma Golf Course from here is as good as you will get. Perched on the oceanside cliffs, the course is real challenge for any golfer. Our current plan is to have a game there this afternoon.

Narooma Golf Course looking from the ocean side

The only booking we could get to play at Narooma was at 12.45pm, not a great tee time, so we will reassess closer to the time, as we still need to drive to Ulladulla this afternoon, and is the golf course is too busy and play slow we may change our mind.

To fill in time, we decide to go for a drive to Central Tilba, it requires us to backtrack about 20km South, but time is on our side.

The town hasn't changed much, other than getting a bit of TV popularity from the River Cottage program.

The Dromedary Hotel is for sale (and they are not serving meals at the moment because the cook has a crook back)

The main street is pretty quiet

I decided to take the steep walk up to the lookout, which is on a hill the houses the towns water tank. There is a nice view of the rural landscape.

One of the locals is a bit starved for attention and rushed over to greet me on the return trip fdown the hill, or perhaps he was hoping I would leave the gate open.

Before heading back to Narooma, we did a quick walk up and down the main street, including a stop at the cheese factory, where we bought a couple of nice cheeses to take home. All we need now is a cup of coffee and we are on our way. The lolly shop claimed to have the best coffee in town, so we gave it a go. It was pretty good, and we bought some Humbugs to help us on our road trips.

The lolly shop was well stocked and set up like an American Diner

Back in Naroooma, it is now around 11.30am and we turned up at the golf course to check our booking and look at how busy it was. There was a mens competition on this morning and they were running behind time. There were also several groups in front of us after the comp. We figured we would be lucky to tee off until after 1pm, and cancelled our booking, made on to play at the Hilltop Course at Mollymook at 1.37pm, and got on the road.

Narooma looked good, but we would have finished too late to then drive Ulladulla for our overnight accommodation

Road works dogged us a bit on our trip to Mollymook, but we managed to arrive in time to tee off at 1.37pm, grabbing a sandwich from the pro shop for lunch. The pro advised that they were running behind on their scheduled renovations and had just sanded the greens yesterday, so he discounted the green fees for us to $30 each for 18 holes. The course was still in great conditon, but the greens were a challenge. todays tournament road was close, with Mike just edging another 2 points ahead, now leading by 19 points.

By the time we were at our motel in Ulladulla (actually it turned out to be Burrill lake, it was around 6.30pm.  The place we are staying is called Edgewater, the same as our apartment complex in Pittwater. Other than also being on the waters edge, the comparisons end there.

It would be fair to say it is not booked out ( there appear to be 2 other rooms occupied), and options for dining out here are non existent, unless you are a good fisherman, and use the very good BBQ in the grounds.

By 7.30pm we were getting pretty hungry, and got in the car and drove to the Ulladulla RSL, 3km away, for a pretty good club food meal.