The Entrance

The weekend got off to a bad start. The one-and-a-half hour journey up to our cabin at Bateau Bay took over three hours because a car and caravan had overturned on the freeway. When I say "freeway", I actually mean a dual carriageway which occasionally turns into a three-laner, but it's the best road there is. The main trunk roads and freeways in Australia really make you appreciate the roads back home. For example, the main north-south highway (number 1) passes right through the sprawling Sydney suburbs, through probably hundreds of sets of traffic lights and across the harbour bridge. It takes ages to get anywhere.

Worst of all, when there's bad traffic, you often don't have the option of coming off at the next junction and using A roads because there often just aren't any other routes.

At least the view was nice as we snaked across the Hawkesbury River with the sun setting over thickly-wooded hills.

Reception were expecting us at 5pm. I rang them to let them know we'd be late.

"We're at Gosford now and I can't decide whether to get some food here on continue on to Bateau Bay".

"Oh if you're at Gosford then you're only twenty minutes away"

"Okay, are there places to eat where you are?"

"Of course! There's a McDonalds and a Red Rooster"

"Right".

McDonalds isn't somewhere you go to eat, it's somewhere you go to use the loo when you can't find anywhere else.

"Okay" I said to Darren. "We're barbequeing those sausages then".

The beach cabin turned out to be really nice when we finally found it. There was also a bottle of wine in the fridge, which was just what we needed. The resort was right on a lagoon a few kilometres south of The Entrance and had a great swimming pool with jacuzzi, which Ella loved.

On Saturday we drove into "The Entrance" which is a funny little place. If you haven't seen the film "Muriel's Wedding", it's set in a fictional place called Porpoise Spit. The film's creator wouldn't reveal their inspiration for the place, except to say that it was a coastal town in New South Wales. I think, therefore, we might have found it.

It looks as though each plot of land has been sold individually over the course of the last fifty years, which has led to a real mish-mash of houses ranging from modern two-storey brick places to corrugated iron shacks resting on piles of bricks. There's one main shopping street (with the ubiquitous dollar shop - like the pound shop but for dollars) and a branch of Coles in a mall.

It's okay, though not somewhere you could imagine living. An enormous group of pelicans (I counted in excess of fifty) comes to the shore to be fed at 3.30pm every day. The local chip shop used to feed them but then they started getting cheeky and crossing the road to the shop in search of their supper, so the council do it now. There's a 100-odd year old hand-painted carousel and a little toot-toot train called "The Pelican Express" (driven by an old man who genuinely looks as though he'd happily mow down any kids who get in the way), then there's "Vera's" water playground (with no word on who Vera might have been) and the lake to enjoy.

Once you've done the pelicans, you've done The Entrance, though Ella had a nice time. It's a little kid's paradise.