Bay of fires , pub in the paddock ,torrential rain and Centenary Park Branxholm

the sun made a brief early appearance now that daylight savings is drawing to a close so we got up early for brekky and the mandatory coffee then packed up and were gone before ten and said goodbye to troy , Jodie ,jack and Tahni from Byron Bay .
Not long after we hit the road it started teaming down , thank god we were in the car , it was a slow trip over the mountains and towards the pub in the paddock to see its old charm and maybe a beer with principal the pig.
It was just after 1030 am when we got to Pengali and we decided to skip the crowds of the local dairy cafe and trod through the wet turf to the pub in the paddock.
Great little pub it had just opened for the day and they weren't really ready I think but Corinna had a coffee and cake while the kids had a lemonade and cake or choc bar of course a Irish red ale was calling my name so I tried one of those however it wasn't particularly to my taste so a boags washed it down .
Back on the road through more winding mountains we got caught in a torrential downpour that made it hard to see but as we came into weldborough I wanted to lunch at the Weldborough hotel I remember from our last trip here but as I turned the car around to park out the front our large car park was stolen from us and the kids took forever to get out of the car close to the pub door so they didn't get drowned so I cracked the shits and kept driving ( waaah!).
The rain didn't ease for the next few hours not much fun to be had today which is a pity as there were several good walks and falls around here.
We drove through the former tin mining town of Derby quite interesting stories of the Chinese miners in early times too.
Shortly after ,we arrived at Branxholm where there is as very cheap powered camp site so we decided to skip Scottsdale free camp for now to get some power into the drained batteries.
Quick setup with no awning or annexe then dash cooked us some chicken wingettes with salad .
a little bit of free time online with finally great Internet reception so we caught up with friends and uploaded some and downloaded more.
A side trip to Scottsdale to escape the dreary rain and into the Eco forest tent like building we did a small tour and watched a few documentaries on trees then left for the supermarket ( finally some relatively cheaper food with a bit of variety at a woolworths).
An ice cream treat for the kids was put aside pending good behaviour which was achieved hank god without bribing too lol.
Chicken pumpkin and leek risotto went down a real treat with garlic bread the perfect warm belly feeling I was looking forward to then cool it down with an ice cream and a running of Madagascar 3 the movie to finish of the night the rain didn't ease through the night in fact we had gusts up to 103 Kmh according to the local media and 60 odd mm rain .
Pretty scary night .