Sapphire Coast with the Austin Family

Trent and Jess from Livin’ in a Van Down Under explore the Sapphire Coast with their family, offering up some good tips for your next visit.

Boyd Town 

Getting caravan sites and any form of accommodation on the South Coast around the Christmas/New Year period is like ‘finding a needle in a haystack’. We called over 15 caravan parks without any luck: “Sorry, we’ve been booked out for months” seemed to be the catch cry.

Fortunately, Jess managed to find a gem of a caravan park on WikiCamps called Boydtown Holiday Park. Located 20 minutes south of Merimbula and 5 minutes south of Eden. This park, although quite basic, provided us with a powered site and water at a very reasonable price of $65 each night (quite cheap for the New Year period). The park is nestled on the shores of the beautifully sheltered beach, Twofold Bay. We spent many hours bathing in the warm waters and playing cricket on the beach. The thing that made this caravan park really stand out, was the laid-back family culture and friendliness of our fellow campers. It had a real festival atmosphere. It even looked a little bit like a tent city, something that you would find at a large Music Festival, minus the pot-smoking, dreadlocked hippies. We met heaps of friendly neighbours including some who were more than happy for us to give them some tips on how to cook the meat on the rotisseries. This park was the perfect place to spend New Years Eve!  

 Sapphire Coast Day Trips

The park provided a great base to do day trips into:

• Bega – Bega Cheese Factory with free cheese tasting, and a kitsch little museum that housed an eight-legged cow, believed to be of Tasmanian and Cessnock heritage.  

•  Tathra – Well known for the recent bushfires that overshadow the magic of the pristine beaches.  

• Pambula – the juiciest freshest oysters literally pulled from the waters and shucked in front of our eyes for a reasonable $17 per dozen.  

•  Merimbula – a tourist hub hiving with activity. Our highlight was discovering a shop called Sanity that stocked these things called CDs and DVDs. Technology! What will they think of next? This business must have a promising future!!!! 

• Eden – Killer Whale Museum – Around $20 admission for the family. We learned about ‘Old Tom’ who was a famous killer whale pack leader. He worked for whalers (in return for fish), rounding up his fellow kind and leading them into a human trap where they would meet their demise. Talk about a sellout. Old Tom would have been suited to career in modern day politics!  

Next stop: Victoria 🙂

-The Austin Family

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