Joe comes to visit

 My Godson Joe is visiting Australia from the UK at the moment. He's worked his way up the east coast to Cairns and then came to stay with us for a week in Canberra (and the south coast).

He's organised his trip really well and seems to be very on top of both his plans and his budget. It was lovely to see him and the kids both enjoyed having a new face around (rather than their nagging old Dad).

While he was staying with us we took a trip down to Pambula on the south coast of NSW. It's a lovely spot and both Pambula and its neigbouring bigger brother, Merimbula are nice towns. They have a real sea-sidey feel with a good split between locals and holiday-makers.

We'd last visited in January and so we knew our way around the campsite as well as the local streets and shops. It's a bit further on from Bateman's Bay (where most Canberrans take summer breaks) but we still ran into a neighbour while we were crossing the road in Merimbula.

We took a fishing trip with Scott who runs the excellent Fishpen Charters and caught about 8-9 decent sized fish, ranging from Sweep, through to Nannygai (Red fish) and delicious Snapper that we froze and ate on Christmas day. Poor Eli got seasick about an hour into the trip so didn't do much fishing on this occasion.

On our second day we took a great walk along the beach to Merlimbula. It's about 5km and so we took a packed lunch and ate it by the side of the lake before walking back to the campsite. We also took a trip to Bega Christmas fayre which was a fun (and local) affair.

Magic Mountain in Merimbula is always a fun day out as well and we spent a sunny day there, variously riding, putting and swimming.

We raced back to see a Christmas Carol playing at Canberra Theatre. It was a fabulous production and put everyone there in the Christmas spirit.

Gingerbread house

catch of the day

Our bag of fish and a snapper

Bega Christmas craft

Magic Mountain, Merimbula