Manatee continues her circumnavigation of the lake

We stayed two nights at Murray's Beach and managed to have a coffee at the nice cafe. Marg continued to fish and we had yummy baked snapper for dinner.

Marg on Murray's Beach jetty modeling her lovely new red crocs

The rain continued to fall so on Friday we decided to continue heading south exploring the lake.

Jack cruises the lake in her lovely purple coat.................and a pelican comes to say hi

Rathmines had a free maritime mooring (there are a number throughout the lake, rated to 20tonne and pink!) as well as a jetty which boats can tie up to-it has a 2hr limit but during winter most don't worry about this limit with many overnighting. We went for the mooring as we feel safer being that little bit more inaccessible. Saved us fiddling with the anchor which was a bonus.

Manatee on the mooring at Rathmines Look! It's Barry's catamaran at the jetty

Rathmines is a lovely part of the lake, the council has done a fantastic job keeping large parcels of the waterfront accesible to the public. Rathmines was a war time aviation facility and has been kept as open space with miles of walking tracks.

AK and the girls walk up the old runway

The mangroves were filled with ducks and pelicans and finches were frequent visitors. Our possie meant it felt we were the only people around this peaceful spot.

Preparing to bake a huge whiting for dinner we managed to strip our kero stove fitting, so ended up using our deck bar-b-que for the first time.

Saturday was a perfect sunny day so after a relaxing morning strolling through the bush we returned to Belmont to seek the assistance of Bruce in fixing the stove. Bruce is a fix-it type who can repair anything with a bit of wire, a rusty nail and a bobbypin! It gave him the opportunity to try out his brand new drill anyway.

On Sunday AK and Margot went to the movies with Denise to see Mamma Mia. Funny film, worth seeing on a rainy Sunday-the fabulous Meryl Streep singing ABBA songs. She sings in tune...Pierce Brosnan struggles! We finished up at Beryl's for afternoon tea before returning to Manatee(urgently as we realised we had left hatches open and it was raining....bugger!)