DAY 6 - EASTER AT TANNUM SANDS 2021...

 Well it's the last day of Easter camping for most of our crew down at Tannum, although this year there are quite a few of us that are staying on.  Those booked in cabins, with the exception of Craig leave today and the Studderts are packing up their tent, but all of us in caravans are staying for at least another 2 to 4 days.

Sarah and Colin were up very early this morning and were ready to leave around 5am to head back to Brisbane.  They wanted to get away pretty early so as to miss all the Coast traffic trying to head back into Brissie after not only the Easter break but also the Brissie lock down. 

The sun is out this morning, which was a nice surprise as we are still predicted to get rain here on the coast..  It did mean though that everyone was able to pack up in the dry.  This was particularly important to Luke and Natalie who at one stage thought of packing all their gear on Saturday night and going to stay with one of Nat's aunts who lives on the coast....

They really didn't want to be packing up in the rain or packing away wet gear.  They were fortunate that they had really fine weather to pack up in....

Whilst they were packing up, I decided to do our Easter Egg hunt that we didn't get time to do the previous day, and we took their kids with us to find eggs that we had hidden around our camp sites...

Behind our camping set up seemed to be a good place to congregate before everyone left to head home.  It started with just a few of us sitting out there, and then as more people came over, our circle got a lot bigger...

Even the kids joined us taking up prominent place in the middle of our circle where they continued to feed themselves on chocolate Easter eggs.

Luke and Nat weren't that keen on leaving too early, Natalie wanted to make the most of their last day of the Easter break, so once they were packed up and shifted their car, we decided to take all the kids to the beach for a play.  They sun had almost disappeared again and it was quite overcast, so it was decided to do it sooner rather than later...

My back and hip are still playing up and although we decided to walk down, we didn't end up right up on the beach as that was a rather big hike but just went across the road and up about 500m to almost the entrance to the creek where we took the kids down onto the sand to play near the rocks.

Luke was great with the kids building dam waters to redirect the water, the boys in particular loved it...

I came across a colony of soldier crabs marching along the beach and Max found them fascinating... It is the first he has seen them.  I remember as a child seeing them on the beach all the time, but these days they are not as common...

Soldier crabs marching along the beach

Natalie was great with the girls helping to build sandcastles, and Willow and Sophie were happy to play in the puddles and build castles also...

The two boys played well together and were more into the building of the dams and digging with the shovel.  Max also enjoyed picking a big clumps of sand to throw..

By the time they had finished building castles and making dams it was lunch time and the sky was getting quite overcast so we decided it was time to head back to camp.  We had offered for Nat and Luke to use our covered area and cook top to prepare lunch for their young family so that hopefully with tummies full, the littlies might fall asleep for them for the journey home...

My the time they had eaten and cleaned up and were ready to put the kids in the car it was 1pm and the rain had just started to fall...

And fall it did, it rained then constantly all afternoon until around 10pm that night.  Much to wet to do anything outdoors at all.  It was too wet to even walk to other people's areas so we spent the afternoon doing the only thing you can in wet weather and that was watching a bit of Netflix...

Steve still had to go out and check the pots and I am eternally grateful to Craig and Emma who decided to accompany him.  It couldn't have been much fun for them in the rain, but they did return with one more crab.

There was very little else we could do for the remainder of the day so the rest of the day was a bit of a write off.  I am so thankful and feel so blessed that the rain didn't start until the last of our campers had left for the day.  No one had to pack up in the rain.... and no one got trapped in their cabins or vans whilst everyone was there, so that in itself is truly amazing considering the weather forecast for the Easter weekend was not looking promising.

Hopefully it will be a better day tomorrow..