Ballina

Hail at Ballina

We said our goodbyes to Dick and Gloria, as they wanted to stay another week with Lynda at the Gold Coast and  we headed to Ballina were we had booked in for a week.  It was a nice  quite caravan park, we were at the western end and only a few vans there alongside several cabins and as the tenants of both were there for over a week as well, we joined in with some friendships made.
Our second day was a bit scary -the sky turned a dark shade of green and  we had a horrendous hail storm !  The golf tournament was "whited out" the whole course covered with golf ballsized hailstones and the matches had to be called off. As fast as it came, it went away, just leaving hail stones over the grass for the children to play with.
Rick and I drove to Lennox Head for lunch one day and enjoyed the trip there, the beach was quite rocky, not really a surfing beach and the road into the town was still being repaired after the bad storms earlier in the year.
Roger and Julie from Brisbane hosted a "sausage sizzle" for the caravanners and we all got together for a "Happy Hour" with them.
We haven't been to the movies for ages, and we were told that "Red Dog" was a good movie, so we went along to the theatre at Ballina Fair and really enjoyed it. We enjoyed lunch there at the Fair the next day and purchased "Amelia" on DVD - the story of Amelia Earhart and actually watched it.  We have quite a few DVDs in our collection in the caravan still waiting to be watched ......we actually watched "Charlie and Boots" on t.v. the next night.
There was a Country and Western Festival on over the Labour Day weekend in Ballina, so there were several Buskers in the street, as well as some Line Dancing and bands playing in the area.  Unfortunately Ballina had another hail storm, around the same intensity as the previous one, and luckily again we were on the edge of it - there was great excitement with the children as they built snowmen out of the ice - they took a while to melt.