Another 6am start, this time to meet up with Zoe and Shaun on the Clyde Coast. They had borrowed Shaun's Mum's motorhome and originally planned to drive up to Byron Bay then stop with us on their way back. However, by the time they reached Bateman's Bay they realised this would be taking on a bit too much driving and asked us to meet them instead.
This gave us one day to book a caravan park which accepted dogs in the busiest week of the year on one of the most popular stretches of coast in the country. Not much of a challenge there then!
Unfortunately, even if the sites had availability and were listed as dog friendly, they generally won't take dogs in the peak holiday season and the kennels were not an option as we were trying to do all of this on a Sunday and they were closed. 

Amazingly, after about ten rejections, we hit lucky with the Kioloa Beach Caravan Park who not only had two pitches available but welcomed dogs with open arms.
We were anticipating a dreadful journey as nearly all Australians are on holiday around this period but it was plain sailing all the way to Milton, which was less than 50km from our destination. Milton is a very pretty little town on the Princes Highway which creates a huge bottleneck during the holiday season, I imagine it can't be much fun to stay there because every time you ventured out of the town you would have to join the hour long queue to get back in again. Anyway we got through and eventually arrived at Kioloa Beach (nobody knows how to pronounce it, even the locals don't seem to agree).
The Clyde Coast is fascinating. If you follow the link you will see that the locals are very proud to have no McDonalds, KFC, poker machines, cinemas, 5 star hotels, betting shops or big supermarkets. It was great, very refreshing. Internet was non existent and it was only possible to get a phone signal if you stood on the boat ramp or by the 50km sign on the road out of Kioloa but this all added to the fun.

 The campsite was very busy but had plenty of shower blocks, a large pool and was surprisingly quiet at night with kangaroos and wombats moving into the site after dark. Once we had met up with Zoe and Shaun we went to explore and found it was situated on a fabulous beach. This whole stretch of coast turned out to be a series of glorious, dog friendly beaches. 

We had a wonderful few days walking in the woods, where we stumbled across kangaroos and goannas, wandering along the beach, and chilling by the pool. The campsite even put on a dog show including a dog fancy dress competition (the dog in the picture is not Monty). Eventually we said our goodbyes and Zoe and Shaun headed south for home while we wandered north on our way back.
The journey home took us through Robertson, home of the Big Potato and Moss Vale where we stopped for the night at the showground. Moss Vale obviously used to be nice but it is now in two halves. One end of town is well kept with lovely buildings while the other looks very down at heel.

 There were many empty shops and it turned out to be impossible to find anywhere to eat so we cooked back at the caravan and left the following morning. As we drove through the neighbouring town of Bowral (birthplace of Don Bradman) we could see where the money previously spent in Moss Vale was going. It was an extremely prosperous looking place, maybe we will stay there next time, I'm sure Ian would like to visit the Don Bradman Museum.