Elvie's Year in Photos 2011: Day 319 On the Beach Again

Tuesday 15 November

We had a quiet morning sorting out stuff for next week. We've now booked a hire car for the week and our first night's accommodation. We're flying down to visit my cousin in Canberra at the weekend but will drive back up along the coast for our last weekend with Gaz & Vicky. I also admitted defeat in our struggles with our Travelex card. For many years we've successfully used a pre paid Euro Mastercard in our travels around Europe. It's more secure and a lot cheaper than using our home bankcards. We thought we'd do the same out here. there's only one company that does them in AUD & that's Travelex. It worked fine till we tried to reload it online. It's a right palaver. There's 6 pages of info to fill in then right at the end we're told "Sorry we can't reload your card at this time" No explanations. I've been trying for 5 days so today rang them. It took two attempts to negotiate my way through the menus to speak to someone who told me there's a limit to how much one can load on in any 6 week period. It's quite expensive out here and their limit is woefully inadequate. I can't reload it for a week. Ridiculous! I'll never use a Travelex card again.

So, this afternoon Ian and I went down to the beach for a swim. The tide was out and we hadn't realised how flat the beach is. At high water it's quite steep so you're in deep water very quickly. Today we waded out half a mile and it was still only knee deep! It was nice and warm so we had a wallow rather than swim and then I came back and had a proper swim in the swimming pool by the house. This evening we enjoyed another bbq by the beach.