“With a bucketful of prawns upon my knee”

Dedicated students of the work of Barry Humphries will recognise the title of this post as a line from a song made famous in the Bazza Mackenzie series.  Hopefully tomorrow’s post will not continue to quote from this saga.

As usual the day began with a walk for Tammie.  This one was greatly enlivened by 3 Black-shouldered Kites providing advice to a passing Brown Falcon.  There were also questions about whether the garbos had been – they are expected tomorrow - as several bins were horizontal.  As at least one set of bins (still vertical) had content we decided the strong winds, rather than a garbage truck, were responsible for the horizontality.

On our way out to Forster we discovered that we were probably wrong since the recycler’s truck was going down the road in front of us, having already been to the (empty) Topi Gums bins.  What the heck, we put the recycling – mainly bottles – in there: it can wait until next week.

We rolled happily into Forster with the plan being for me to go to the library for internet purposes and Frances to do grocery shopping in the shopping centre across the road.  This happened very nicely: the library didn’t even charge and had hour slots!  Big plus points for Great Lakes Shire!  They even have nice mural art on the outside of the building!

Of course they have the worst dog regulations of any of the Shires we have visited: not only have they kowtowed to the idiocy of NPWS for most of their sandy bits, but those which aren’t fronting a ‘National’-  why are National things run by the States? – Park are also dog-banned during daylight hours.  However we had left Tammie at home.

That meant she didn’t get to see the octopus in their sea-filled baths.  This was quite a large beastie – perhaps 30cm across the tentacles – which, when we got to see it, was slithering across the bottom of the pool.  However the girl who first spotted said it had been right at the lip when initially seen.  Despite our hanging out for some time it didn’t ascend again so no snap!

We carried on along their Bicentennial walk to Pebbly Beach which lived up to its name.  This meant that when waves receded we got the classic (a la Brighton UK or Lima, Peru) rattle of the pebbles being rolled back. 

 Our final bit of business was to visit the Wallis Lake Fisherman’s Cooperative to acquire some prawns and oysters for tea.  Quite good value, and from memory will be very tasty.

The memory was correct: the prawns were the tastiest I have had for yonks and the oysters very juicy.  Frances suggested adding a small drop of Tabasco to the oysters and I must admit this did enhance their extremely good natural taste! 

To complete the story/song referred to in the subject of this post, the health and safety implications of the seafood were as hoped for and I did not need to complete Mr Mackenzie’s couplet “… chundered in the old Pacific Sea.”