Trip to New South Wales, Day 3-Kiama

Day 3 was spent on the South Coast, exploring the Kiama blowhole and the Pilot's Cottage Museum and Heritage Centre.

On the day we got to Kiama, on the New South Wales South Coast, we walked to the Post office which is pink and got a stamp on our Travel Booklets!. We went up the hill, following a sign showing the way to the lighthouse, the blowhole and cafes. We continued up the hill and got to a parking lot with an area that had railings and over-looked the blowhole.

We looked for a bit, then went down to the blowhole. It was great! We went to a concrete area that was really close to the blowhole. There were also wooden pathways that led around the blowhole. It spurted some really high spouts. One of them was about 30-40 metres high!

Some of the spouts weren’t so big. I could tell when the water was about to spout because the water would rush in. We took some pictures of the blowhole, but it was difficult because you had to time it just right to get the blowhole at its highest point. We also took some videos.

We walked up to the main area and went to a cafe, where we enjoyed a big bush brekkie and a blackberry forest cake with coffee.

We went down to the Pilots Cottage Museum and saw it was shut. We looked around to see if there was anyone inside, then a man came over and unlocked the doors. He went in to disable the security alarm and let us inside.

He showed us the records and model of a ship that George Bass sailed. There was a lot of information in there about George Bass, including pictures of a re-enactment. There was also a map of all the shipwrecks in the area, with numbers to locate them, and information about the different shipwrecks.

The tour guide unlocked a glass case and showed us wooden things that were shaped roughly like needles, except with a shorter point. There were three of them and two of them were broken. They were about 25cm long and about 5cm wide at the widest point, and 1cm wide at the narrowest. We had a couple of guesses as to what they were, then the man said they were used to undo knots on ships. He put them back in the glass case, and got out a bottle of sauce from a company that advertised that they put a secret ingredient into their sauce. He said that a man came in and said that he worked as a forensic policeman. The man had said that if he could get a sample of the sauce, then he could work out what the secret ingredient was. The man gave the sauce to us to feel, then locked it back in the glass case and went to unlock the other rooms in the museum.

In the first room there was some convict information, a picture of the post office, some pictures of a fire that burned down some of Kiama and the chair of the mayor of the Kiama area.There was also a book that was the ultimate guide to injuries. Back then, if you got injured, you were on your own, so the book was consulted to treat everything from a snake bite to a cold. The man also told us that there were world record tiger shark and black marlin caught off the coast of Kiama.

The next room had a story about William Kelly, a boy who could swim and was trying to tell people how good and healthy it was, but most people were from cold countries, and couldn’t swim. He had shows in which he would be tied in a sack and thrown into the water. He would then get himself out and swim to the surface to show people how easy it was. One day a ship was sinking and no one knew why. William swam down and saw that a port hole had been left open and was letting the water in. He closed it and swam back up to the surface. He got a pocket watch for saving the ship, and the pocket watch was on display in that room. There was also a leaf hat in that room. The hat was woven from leaves, but had a hole in the top. The man said that the hat wasn’t a proper one, because a proper one wouldn’t have a hole.

The next room had a lot of different things, like some tools that had been donated by different people. There were axes, picks, and different tools that were used to do things with wood. All of them had labels of what they were and a picture of them in action.
Before we left, our tour guide lifted up some floor boards and showed us a secret store area underneath the floor. He turned on the lights, which were turned on by pulling a cord that hung down from the ceiling. We could see right down and there was lots of room down there. The man said that he’d been down there, and when he was standing on the bottom of the cavern, the floor was equal with his chest. The man said that there were entrances to the storeroom in the other rooms, and a concrete slab over another entrance outside. The man replaced the boards and turned off the lights, then we went outside.

The man let us out the back door and onto the porch. We went down the stairs and saw some breathing holes for the store room at the bottom of the walls outside. We also saw the concrete slab covering the outside entrance to the storeroom. There was a gravestone outside and the man said that it was found under the Bowls Club. We went back inside and the guide showed us a picture of the Allan Penny, which is very rare and one was found in Victoria a while ago and was worth $14,000. The man said that today one would be worth $100,000. He also said that someone had said that a box of 10 Allan Pennies was dropped beside a highway near Kiama.

The tour was really worthwhile and good value for money. We also paid a quick visit to the Kiama Information Centre, to buy some souvenirs of our trip.

We had to race to the train station because the train was due to leave, and there wouldn’t be another for a couple of hours.