Lakes Entrance & Mallacoota Victoria Part 1
April 20th 2010 04:38
Ok, so just to explain the ‘We’ in my blogs, I am a 39 year old (eeek not sure how that crept up on me) Female and am not a native Australian but have embraced Australia as my home. The other part of the ‘We’ is my Housemate who is in his late 20’s and he is an Australian born and bred in Victoria. We have been housemates now for a few years, friends for longer than that and we like to go camping and touristing (yes that is my own word) together because we both want to see the sights of Australia and doing the camping and touristy stuff is not as much fun alone. Besides who else is going to kill the bugs and spiders for me!! Although it is not always sweetness and light (we fight like cats and dogs, or a married couple at times), we always come away with some good memories from our trips.
So on my 39th birthday weekend this year we decided to go to Lakes Entrance. I should mention that my birthday falls around Australia Day so I always take my birthday off work and any extra days it takes to make an extra long weekend for myself. I had heard of Lakes Entrance and decided that it would be nice to see the views other people were raving about. After a bit of research I decided our trip would centre on a lunchtime cruise on the Saturday.
So on the Friday before Australia day we set off on our trip to Lakes Entrance, going via Seaspray, now for those who are savvy about Victoria you will realise that going via Seaspray is not exactly a direct route, but then again my housemate is the king of going on tiki tours whenever we go anywhere. Even going to our local hardware store five minutes away can end up in a drive to the hardware store an hour away just because he feels like a bit of a drive.
Nothing exciting happened on the drive to Seaspray, it’s a nice enough drive through the countryside and unlike most of our other trips, at least we didn’t have to negotiate going through the city. The highlight of the trip for my housemate was discovering Ford Road, which we did a bit of reversing back to so that he could take a photo of the sign. I also got to go through all these places I normally hear of when listening to the Vline train announcements at Spencer street, Moe, Traralgon, I did see a sign for Mirboo North but we decided Seaspray was enough of a detour without going to a town just because I recognised the name. At Seaspray we stopped long enough for a quick walk to the beach and a few photos and then continued on our merry little way towards Lakes Entrance.
We hadn’t decided on where we would stay (this is not uncommon for our trips either), so when we hit Bairnsdale we thought we would detour to Paynesville to see if there were any good camping spots down that way. To keep a story short, the Public Loos in Paynesville are clean and nice to use, but there are no camping sites in Paynesville except for caravan parks, so with it being earlyish we decided to make our way to Lakes Entrance and see if we came across anywhere to stay on the way.
Coming over the bridge into Lakes Entrance I fully appreciated why it is a holiday destination of choice for so many, the view was spectacular of the seas entrance to the lakes (hence the name Lakes Entrance. It would have been lovely if we had been able to camp up on the hill for the night, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible so on we drove into Lakes Entrance and got ourselves a camping spot at Eastern Beach Tourist Park just on the other side of the town centre.
Eastern Beach was a nice enough spot, although they tried to tell us they were booked out and we were lucky there was a cancellation, yet there were a lot of empty spots around our camping site, in fact in a row of about 6 powered sites there were only ourselves and another couple a few spots down. They were very busy, no denying that as opposite our spots the unpowered area was covered in tents, but booked out, not unless they had a lot of cancellations. The amenities were nice and clean and the area was well lit so you felt safe, the only problem was we were next to a little waterway and there were people wondering up and down it all night fishing for some type of fishy animal, it might have been prawns or something.
The next morning we booked out and headed off to our cruise, the lady at the cruise office was wonderful and showed us where we could park the car and camping trailer. We had opted to go for the lunch time cruise onboard Peels Lake Cruises Stormbird for their Metung Cruise which departs at 11am daily. It’s a four hour cruise with an hour cruising to Metung where you stop for a couple of hours and have lunch at the pub then take a cruise back to where you start.
The lunch wasn’t anything special, but it was nice sitting out in the sun and watching the boats coming and going at the dock. We also had a bit of a walk around the mini town and had an ice cream (which was yummy) then sat and had a drink till the boat was ready to go again. The wonderful thing about this cruise going to Metung every day is that if you are in the middle of having a drink then you can take it back on the boat with you and the boat takes your dishes back to the pub again the next trip.
We were lucky to have James Peel as our captain for the day, having grown up in the area he was extremely informative about the history of Lakes Entrance and we were ultra impressed with his commentary throughout the trip.
Coming in Part 2 of our weekend trip to Lakes Entrance is our detour to Mallacoota (again, I refer you back to the housemate’s tendency for a tiki tour)
So on my 39th birthday weekend this year we decided to go to Lakes Entrance. I should mention that my birthday falls around Australia Day so I always take my birthday off work and any extra days it takes to make an extra long weekend for myself. I had heard of Lakes Entrance and decided that it would be nice to see the views other people were raving about. After a bit of research I decided our trip would centre on a lunchtime cruise on the Saturday.
So on the Friday before Australia day we set off on our trip to Lakes Entrance, going via Seaspray, now for those who are savvy about Victoria you will realise that going via Seaspray is not exactly a direct route, but then again my housemate is the king of going on tiki tours whenever we go anywhere. Even going to our local hardware store five minutes away can end up in a drive to the hardware store an hour away just because he feels like a bit of a drive.
Nothing exciting happened on the drive to Seaspray, it’s a nice enough drive through the countryside and unlike most of our other trips, at least we didn’t have to negotiate going through the city. The highlight of the trip for my housemate was discovering Ford Road, which we did a bit of reversing back to so that he could take a photo of the sign. I also got to go through all these places I normally hear of when listening to the Vline train announcements at Spencer street, Moe, Traralgon, I did see a sign for Mirboo North but we decided Seaspray was enough of a detour without going to a town just because I recognised the name. At Seaspray we stopped long enough for a quick walk to the beach and a few photos and then continued on our merry little way towards Lakes Entrance.
We hadn’t decided on where we would stay (this is not uncommon for our trips either), so when we hit Bairnsdale we thought we would detour to Paynesville to see if there were any good camping spots down that way. To keep a story short, the Public Loos in Paynesville are clean and nice to use, but there are no camping sites in Paynesville except for caravan parks, so with it being earlyish we decided to make our way to Lakes Entrance and see if we came across anywhere to stay on the way.
Coming over the bridge into Lakes Entrance I fully appreciated why it is a holiday destination of choice for so many, the view was spectacular of the seas entrance to the lakes (hence the name Lakes Entrance. It would have been lovely if we had been able to camp up on the hill for the night, but unfortunately, that wasn’t possible so on we drove into Lakes Entrance and got ourselves a camping spot at Eastern Beach Tourist Park just on the other side of the town centre.
Lakes Entrance view from the look out
Eastern Beach was a nice enough spot, although they tried to tell us they were booked out and we were lucky there was a cancellation, yet there were a lot of empty spots around our camping site, in fact in a row of about 6 powered sites there were only ourselves and another couple a few spots down. They were very busy, no denying that as opposite our spots the unpowered area was covered in tents, but booked out, not unless they had a lot of cancellations. The amenities were nice and clean and the area was well lit so you felt safe, the only problem was we were next to a little waterway and there were people wondering up and down it all night fishing for some type of fishy animal, it might have been prawns or something.
The next morning we booked out and headed off to our cruise, the lady at the cruise office was wonderful and showed us where we could park the car and camping trailer. We had opted to go for the lunch time cruise onboard Peels Lake Cruises Stormbird for their Metung Cruise which departs at 11am daily. It’s a four hour cruise with an hour cruising to Metung where you stop for a couple of hours and have lunch at the pub then take a cruise back to where you start.
Metung Pub, destination for Stormbird Cruise
The lunch wasn’t anything special, but it was nice sitting out in the sun and watching the boats coming and going at the dock. We also had a bit of a walk around the mini town and had an ice cream (which was yummy) then sat and had a drink till the boat was ready to go again. The wonderful thing about this cruise going to Metung every day is that if you are in the middle of having a drink then you can take it back on the boat with you and the boat takes your dishes back to the pub again the next trip.
We were lucky to have James Peel as our captain for the day, having grown up in the area he was extremely informative about the history of Lakes Entrance and we were ultra impressed with his commentary throughout the trip.
Coming in Part 2 of our weekend trip to Lakes Entrance is our detour to Mallacoota (again, I refer you back to the housemate’s tendency for a tiki tour)
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