Refuge Cove - what a beauty! By the time we set anchor and watched for a while to see how things stood the daylight was disappearing fast.The sun sets at 4.30 pm around here, being behind the mountains. The anchorage was surprisingly rolly as we were held side on to the reflected swell rolling around the point. Luckily we felt secure enough to ignore it and slept soundly.
Tuesday morning dawned clear and we found ourselves surrounded by densely forested mountains, blue sky and a lovely little golden beach lined on either side with large granite boulders. Out came Lily. We hadn't used her since Kangaroo Island, so it was a good time to air her out. Again we had to dodge the surge and little breakers slapping onto the beach. Our landing was well timed and after carrying the dinghy above the high tide line we set off to explore. Our part of the bay had a stream running in at the corner and two camping areas, one for hikers and one for boaters. I couldn't think why the segregation, but there it was. In the boaters camp area many of the crews that had come through had signed in with varied "we were here signs'. It was interesting seeing who had come before us and at what time of the year. Most had come in summer of course, but we did find two or three others who had been there in winter. We took a twenty minute walk through the forest to the northern end beach and observed that the swell was much larger here and that we were definitely in the right place.
After lunch we decided to take one of the bushwalks south of our bay. The path soon crossed a small bridge over the creek we had seen in the morning and upon coming around the corner we spotted a wombat grazing on the green grass at the edge of the water. Now we knew who the lawnmower was. The banks of the creek were lined with beautiful trimmed green lawn like grass. Our first wombat in the wild and he/she stayed long enough for us to get a good look.
Our bushwalk took us on a 3km climb to the summit of Kersop's Peak from where we had a wonderful view of the whole area. At this distance the sea looked calm and blue, but we knew there was a decent swell out there as it was still rolling across the entrance to the cove. It was quite a climb and we were pleased to get some exercise after a couple of days at sea.
On Wednesday a window of opportunity opened for us to make the long trip, 220nm to Eden, just over the Victorian/NSW border. As we left the cove Kersop's Peak was dwarfed amongst the mountains of Wilsons Promontory. Yesterday we thought we had done a decent climb. Must be coming from WA. Over there it would have been a big one. We motored most of the morning with little or no wind and later in the day the wind picked up enough to sail.
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