First stop… Bombala! An easy two hour drive from Royalla with a short stop in Bredbo at the Bredbo Pie Shop. It’s a quiet little town that time forgot with a main street dominated by historic hotels (not all open) and the Bombala RSL club.
The caravan park is beside the Bombala River on the opposite side of the town. There’s a very nice river walk that loops over both sides of the river for about a kilometre on either side, with footbridges at either end. The traffic bridge pierces the centre of the walk and it’s a easy stroll over into the town.
We originally intended to stay only two nights but ended up opting for a third to just wind down a bit after the whirlwind of packing the house. The caravan park was cosy but thevery clean with spacious and easy drive-through sites nestled amongst a beautiful display of autumn leaves. Despite day-time temperatures ranging bewtween 10°C and 12°C, the air was coming straight off the Antarctic and felt more like 2° (or less).
Since we were on a powered site we tried out the van’s reverse cycle heating and found it more than adequate to keep us comfortably warm as the temperatures dropped. Between the electric heater and the diesel heater we can be pretty sure that we’ll be warm whether we we on a powered or unpowered camp site.
There’s a number of Cafes and a bakery in Bombala, which ironically had less bakery goods than the cafes… Like a lot of small towns there are a number empty shops, presumably casualties of COVID, but there are signs of life. To single one out… we had lunch at the Cosmo Cafe. A very friendly eatery that still does genuine a Aussie Hamburger With The Lot, including beetroot, egg, bacon, pineapple, cheese on a oversize bun that slowly disintegrates as you eat it leaving you with a full stomach and juices smeared all over your face and hands…
Although Bombala claims one of the largest platypus populations in the country we didn’t see any (although we weren’t looking too hard). There is a dedicated reserve area on the edge of town where you can often see them in the early morning or late afternoon. Given the cold temperatures and our desire to stay warm we opted not to visit given that we had seen a platypus at Tumut on a different trip.
During our stay in Bombala we learnt that our Property Managers (Blackshaw Queanbeyan) had secured a tenant (professional couple) for our House. So that was a load off our shoulders as well knowing that the house will be occupied and we’ll be receiving some nice income from it as we travel. We celebrated this with our last bottle of Andrew Peace wine from our Mungo National Park trip. It was his Unexpected Shiraz, which is preservative free (no sulphur) and opens with a slight pop and release of gas. It’s a very pleasant drop that is not quite as full as your typical shiraz but still has that shiraz body and depth. It was easily robust enough to stand up to Spag’ Bol’ without overpowering it…
After a couple of relaxing days doing ‘not much’ we celebrated our 34th wedding anniversay on the last day with our traditional pub/club dinner at the Club Bombala, which is (or was) the RSL Club. Typical small town club serving the usual club style meals. We both had parmi’s and I opted for the Pepperoni Parmi, which was pretty decent. Paired really well with a good ol’ Tooheys Old too!
We did intend our next stop to be Cann River but opted instead to book for Orbost given that Cann River was only an hour away. So after a pleasant few days in Bombala we packed up for the first time (of many to come) and pointed the cruiser towards Orbost…