We had breakfast in our Comfort Inn suite. Lou, who’s bedroom was downstairs, tackled the metal circular stairs to come up to the second floor where there was a full kitchen, small lounge, and the second bedroom/bathroom. These units are designed as holiday flats and so are equipped for a family to enjoy their holiday. Amazingly, the unit was quite affordable.
We packed up and headed out to our next stop, Batemans Bay, another seaside town and popular holiday destination. Our weather for today was cloudy with some rain at the start, but improving as we got closer to Batemans Bay.

Our drive started out in very overcast and rainy conditions. Initially, the countryside was really beautiful with bright green rolling hills. The recent rain has turned everything green in the pasture lands and it was beautiful.
Lovely green fields The Snowy Mountains in the distance Old train trestle bridge Rolling hills
But then we got into the bush and what a difference. The Princes Highway (A1) just opened 3 days ago after large sections of it had been closed due to the bushfires. As you can see from the map above, it goes through a lot of green areas on the map which signify National Parks or National Forests. We expected to see a lot of fire damage, but I don’t think any of us anticipated seeing what we saw. I found a map on Google of bushfires burning on January 3. Our route was right through all of those red dots in the lower right part of the map, essentially the entire 460k (285 miles).

At least 33 people have been killed – including four firefighters – and more than 11 million hectares (110,000 sq km or 27.2 million acres) of bush, forest and parks across Australia has burned. Some 3,000 homes in the states of Victoria and New South Wales were burned.
We couldn’t believe our eyes as we traveled miles and miles and miles through burned out bushland. It was horrible to see. We think we drove about 200 km seeing nothing but charred trees. We all felt dazed by what we saw. Lou commented that it looked like something he saw at the War Museum in Canberra, a large photo of war dead across a battlefield. And it did look like that but instead of bodies there were great fallen charred trees lying on the scorched earth and in the totally denuded forest.
The battlefield of a bush fire Charred trees for miles Same image for miles and miles
Although we didn’t drive down to the town of Mallacoota, this is the area that you might have seen on TV where people were going to the beach to escape the fire because there was no other way out. The Navy came to their rescue and picked up people from the beach and took them to Navy vessels off shore. The smoke was horrific and the flying embers from the raging fire ignited everything. It must have been a nightmare to go through.
After miles and miles of carnage, all of a sudden we arrived in the seaside town of Eden, and it was.
Beautiful view of the ocean Eden harbor Fishing wharf
For whatever reason, Eden was spared. You may not be able to see it, but in the middle photo above all the land across the water, including the shoreline and the mountain was burned and we could see the orange hue of burned dead leaves all across the landscape. It was so nice to find Eden intact and to not be in charred forests. We ate a great fish and chips lunch in a wharf-side cafe. It was yummy and we all enjoyed the stiff breeze and salt air walking around the wharf.
We hoped that we had seen the last of the bushfire area, but it was not to be. Very quickly we reentered the burn zone and again, mile after mile of charred trees. Even many of the highway signs were melted so we knew that the fire had to have been very hot to melt the metal signs. What is so amazing, however, is the amount of green we did see. The tree ferns showed long bright green branches coming out of their charred trunks. This looked rather like green umbrellas dotting the scorched earth.
Passing look of burned area showing fern tree growing Green showing on forest floor
What we really liked seeing is all the green sprouts coming out of the trunks of charred trunks and branches. I posted some photos of this up close in one of my Nana Glen posts about Tony and Liz’s place. But driving along the highway seeing large areas of charred trees with the new growth, Christine commented that it made it look like the trees were growing fur. I learned that these sprouts are called epicormic buds. The buds are present under the bark of some trees but held firmly in check by the hormonal influence of the trees’ crown of leave. When defoliation occurs, caused by such things as fire, they sprout. The new shoots (epicormic shoots) produce green foliage that enables the tree to survive. So we were very heartened to see so many “furry” trees, which means they will survive.
Epicormic sprouts “Furry” trees
Two small towns that we drove through were especially hard hit, Cobargo and Mogo. It seemed that most of the houses were destroyed. In both towns, many buildings in the main business district had burned down. Coming into the town we passed many lots that only had a brick chimney sticking up and nothing else. I remembered the town of Cobargo because while at Tony and Liz’s, we watched a program produced by one of the Sydney TV stations that was called Hellfire: The Battle of Cobargo. It showed the horrific bushfire and focused on what happened to a family there. What really punched me in the gut was the fire chief being interviewed. Clearly the man was suffering and I suspect he’ll have PTSD for the rest of his life. His face and demeanor were that of a broken man. If anyone wishes to watch this hour-long, very compelling, program to live up close and personal to bushfires, you can find it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvfKPZacui8.
We finally made it to Batemans Bay. I was very much relieved to be through the bushfire carnage. It’s overwhelming. We started looking around for a motel and we learned that many of the motels had no vacancy because they were full of either families who had lost their homes or workers who were cleaning up the tremendous amount of devastation. Fortunately, we stopped in a place that had vacancies. The manager kept stressing the “budget” nature of the rooms available because the nicer rooms were booked. That kind of scared me, but the rooms worked out well. They served our needs and were clean and comfortable. The manager also showed me where a nice Thai restaurant was two doors down. We enjoyed a pleasant meal and then went for a walk along the waterfront.
Batemans Bay is at the entrance of the Clyde River, an estuary famous for oysters. The mouth of the river that meets the ocean is very wide so it was interesting to see waves coming into the river quite a ways up river, there wasn’t a shoreline to stop the waves in the river. We saw a small rainbow and enjoyed our stroll, and at one point hundreds of squawking seabirds came swooping up the river from the sea.
Rainbow Looking down river to the sea The Clyde River Nice place on a penisula View out to sea Octopus sculpture Another sculpture along the waterfront Jetty Evening sky Twilight in Batemans Bay
We walked back to the motel and brought an end to our day. It was an emotional drive, one that has to be seen to be believed; 27 million acres burned and we saw a big slice of that.
What am amazing drive. Hopefully this part is really once in a lifetime.
The Youtube video was indeed compelling. Thanks for sharing that.