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MIRIAM VALE
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There's not much in Miriam Vale. But for caravaners on a budget, it has everything!
Miriam Vale is the home of 3 Australian Big Things. Well they are not really that big, but they are on the official Australian Big Thing Map. The best one is the Big Donut, just up from this cute Pharmacy that you see here in the picture. Then we have th Big Crab. Not really that big. It's on the Bruce Highway and above a take-away shop. Then there's the little Big Magpie and nest on top of the local Magpie Footy Club House, located on the road out of town to Agnes Water & 1770.
We had 3 choices of accommodation here. Two were free and the other one was our choice in the end. To date, Queensland has been raining for us non-stop. Our budget has been blown by staying in Caravan Parks. The free camping that I had planned has not eventuated. So I really wanted to make that up by staying next to the Miriam Vale Pub free. When we arrived, the sites here were muddy and under trees. No go. We drove down the road to the other free sites which were totally on concrete. Disappointment. No privacy whatsoever. The only other option was on the Bruce Highway on the way out of town. More about that in a minute.
So we drove into the concrete accommodation, grabbed Tookie in his backpack and walked up to the Pub to sit down with a coldie and make our decision.
The Miriam Vale Pub is awesome. Old heritage building with a nice beer garden out back, yummy food and friendly locals. Doesn't get any better.
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ACCOMMODATION
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After forking out $47 most nights to stay in Caravan Parks, it was a pleasure to stay at the Miriam Vale Star Roadhouse Motel and Caravan Park just out of town for only $25 per night.
It didn't matter that we had constant truck traffic all night. It didn't matter that there was no dump point. It didn't even matter that the BBQ in the pool area was filthy dirty and in need of replacing. What mattered is that it was only $25 per night including power, a sparkling pool, clean amenities and a 24hr roadhouse with restaurant. 5 Star Google review from me.
Miriam Vale is the first time that I have had a little perspiration on my forehead so I was glad to have air-con and a pool to cool off in.
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AGNES WATER
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Agnes Water was a disappoint for us. We tried 3 different ways to get to the beach. Each one was a failure. It seems that this town is geared essentally for tourists staying in the flash resorts everywhere, most of them without beach frontage. It also seemed that these resorts wanted to have the beach to themselves, that is the ones that had beach frontage. We were met with culdesacs at each attempt to find the beach. Culdesacs surrounded by resorts. So we gave up and drove to 1770 instead.
Agnes Water did have one thing going for it. The Information Centre. What lovely volunteers here. It is full of trinkets. I wanted to buy the whole thing!
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I selected a cute blue octapus and white starfish snow globe. Also a pink & purple glass necklass and cute white seahorse keyring for my little aqua bag. There goes 2 weeks pocket money savings. I had to get hubby to take this photo of 2 Ann's.
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1770
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No prizes for guessing why this town is called 1770.
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Anyway, 1770 is much better in our opinion than Agnes Water. In fact I wanted to see what these two towns look like as I had thought about buying land here when the first lot of land went up for sale about 40 years ago. At that time it was dirt cheap and offered as coastal living at a reasonable price. In hindsight, having checked it out, I am glad that I did not buy here. Yes of course we would have made a small fortune, but we could never live here. It takes a good 40 minutes to get here from the Bruce highway and is still what I feel is an isolated coastal town and not somewhere I would be happy to put down my roots. I need to at least be no more than 15 minutes away from a large town complete with decent shopping centre, hospital and airport. That is why we have chosen to live in Woolgoolga on the coast near Coffs Harbour.
1770 headland has two nice bush walks leading to viewing platforms of the rugged coastline.
After our little bush walks, we drove back down to the southside of Endeavour Park for our picnic as the carpark there was completely full. It wasn't until we had unwrapped our sandwiches that I discoverd that I had completely forgot the chicken. Silly me. So we wrapped them back up again and kept for dinner and headed to Agnes Water Tavern instead for lunch. No photos of that, sorry.
The Tavern was nice and spacious and food hit the spot. We also saw a couple of locals that we met at the Miriam Vale Pub the day before. In chatting with them we discovered that one has a brother that lives on Great Keppel Island and manages the Pub there. Well that was a good excuse for me to go back and book our accommodation on the Keppel Coastline at Yeppoon near Rocky.
Great Keppel was where we went on our honeymoon 45 years ago. We had the honeymoon caravan. Great Keppel has an abandoned resort and so therefore has not developed and still natural. I guess we will learn more about that when we get there.
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Lastly, we are totally sick and tired of the constant rain. It does seem however to be letting up enough for us to at least get some sun to do the tourist stuff. We still have to be careful of flooding because flooding can still happen a day or two after the rain stops as you can see from the photo below.
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MAPS
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VIDEOS
1770 HEADLAND, BUSHWALKS & BUTTERFLIES
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