continued... well we managed to get through the chicane of vehicles that had been abandoned in the flood water and continued on our way towards the highway. Not many vehicles could be seen coming from Kiama way and the sight of a semi trailer bogged up to its axles on the grass median strip adjacent to the briffen wire fence, did not bode well for us. Regardless we pushed on to Kiama. Upon arriving in Kiama we decided to to call our digs for the night , Easts Beach Caravan Park, to see how they were faring. Engaged. OK no problems they are probably on the phone to another person...maybe. When we finally got onto them I enquired how we were placed for a site for the night. There was quite a pregnant pause as they contemplated how to answer. Finally the apologetic lady stated that they had experienced a flash flood through the park and had to evacuate all occupants. She went on to say that we could take a risk with a site but that was up to us. She couldn't even offer us a cabin as the park had experienced some damaged. She didn't volunteer and I didn't ask. To compound the issues there was a rock slide blocking the highway on Kiama bends for all north bound traffic and a bit further down the road at Gerringong the highway was shut in both directions. Happy days!! Even the rail line hadn't faired well with track south of Kiama being damaged and trains not getting through in any direction. Time to act. With rain continuing to fall and helicopters buzzing around with monotonous regularity, we decided to try for a hotel room in Kiama and sit this one out for the night. Not much fun setting up a camper in driving rain blowing a gale.
As I had the laptop and modem on board, I jumped on line and browsed Last Minute and Wotif for a room for the night. We settled on one close by that we could still get to (there were others that were flooded in!!!)
We paid online and promptly headed to the hotel to check in out of the not so pleasant weather. When we got there we were greeted by a line of people to the door of reception. "Glad we booked on line", I was thinking as I stood in line. As it turns out there were many people stranded in Kiama due to the trains being out, many of them people working there. To compound the problem the workers at the hotel couldn't get there either. The lady at reception turned to me and asked did I have a reservation. I replied yes, through Wotif. Another pregnant pause. I was getting used to them by this stage. You could see the wheels turning as she stated "oh expletive I haven't told them to take the rooms off". We ended up getting the second last room as the "NO VACANCY" sign was hung out. We were then told our room would be ready in a couple of hours as they had no staff!! Poor buggers. Felt really sorry for them. We spent the ensuing hours at the now overcrowded and understaffed leagues club with many other stranded people. SES were frenetically running around trying to find people emergency accommodation. The bistro was madness with only one chef on (so I was told).
We finally got back to our room and spent an other wise uneventful night.
Next day we decided to can our south coast holiday and headed back up, past home, and spent the rest of the week at beautiful Seal Rocks. You couldn't have picked two more contrasting days. We had sensational weather there, perfect in fact.
We wont forget this holiday in a hurry!!!
