With my back feeling slightly better, we loaded up our van and headed north. About an hour later we were stuck in the middle of Sydney CBD, sweating hot, moving 2 miles an hour and swearing at the Sat Nav. Through a combination of blind luck and stupidity we found our way across the bridge and heading up to Newcastle which was to be our first stop. This was only to get a picture of the place and say I'd been there. We arrived no bother, passing Jesmond and Wallsend, drove around a little bit, past the beach, wondering where everybody was, stopped, ate something for lunch – Bindya couldn't bring herself to finish her tandoori chicken roll – then drove off again. It was not the most inspiring place in the world. Originally it was where the hardest and most badly behaved prisoners were sent. There was also massive coal deposits there – whether this was why it was named or just a coincidence, I don't know.
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| The road to Newcastle... |
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| Lots of coal... |
We kept driving North up the Pacific Highway, heading for Port Nelson. The drive was not particularly scenic, just a long road. We got to Port Nelson about half six. It looked rubbish. The campsite was closed but had a sign saying we could park on a spot outside the gate and pay tomorrow. We parked up and went to check out the facilities. After one look at the camp kitchen, we decided to try to find somewhere else. 5 mins down the road we found another little site, also shut but with a telephone number to call. I called the number and some bloke stuck his head over the wall to deal with me. He didn't seem happy as he was trying to get his daughter off to bed. I apologised profusely, paid our 40 dollars (!) and we went in. Not much to comment here, we made some food and went to sleep. The park was full of ibis, though, which I hadn't seen before.
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| Ibis |
We headed off the next morning bound for Port Macquarie, a place that we can consistently pronounce wrong in a number of different ways. We were at a Big Four campsite so it wasn't cheap but it had a pool, free wifi in the lounge and was right next to the beach and town. We sorted out the van and went for a dip in the pool as it was so hot. The place was full of young kids but we had the pool to ourself for a little bit. We used the wifi for a bit – not very fast and we could only get it in the lounge. We took a wander into town which was OK but very quiet. We decided to spend the evening chilling in the van so we had a few glasses of wine and took it easy.
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| Port Macquarie |
Next morning was an earlyish start to get up to Coffs Harbour which didn't take much time at all so we took plenty of stops along the way at scenic lookouts and little, deserted beaches.
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| Captain Cook's Lookout |
We found a campsite near the beach but a long way from town. We took a walk down to the beach, which was empty, then walked along to the harbour. There was a lot of very expensive looking bars and cafes on the way, leading to the harbour full of large yachts. There was a walk along the edge of the harbour up to Muttonbird Island which we decided to take, even though the weather was pretty poor. We walked up to the island and then walked back again. Great. It rained so we sat in our van. Lovely.
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| The harbour - very pretty |
We wanted to get off early the next day to visit 'The Big Banana' – this is a big banana that the locals made out of concrete, starting the craze of building big things and being impressed by them. Apparently there is a 'Big Lobster' somewhere. And a 'Big Pineapple' etc. We drove up to the big banana, 'round the carpark and back out again, deciding to take photos on the way back. Byron Bay was the next stop. We got there fairly early, about 1ish, and found a caravan park. We walked in to the office and the owner was chatting to a big biker bloke about his false leg. We stood round politely admiring his false leg then got a site for a decent price, about $25, and headed straight down to see the market which was just beside the campsite. It was quite a big and impressive market but we soon realised what sort of a place Byron Bay was by looking at the people there. Basically full of every type of hippy imaginable. All the stalls were either selling organic vegetarian food or flowery skirts and Thai fisherman trousers. It was all like some big summer festival with everyone walking 'round barefoot and telling each other how great they were.
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| Byron market |
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| At the pub |
We strolled around the stalls for a while, had a bite to eat then headed back. We went into town and checked out the beach, which was pretty, then we went for a drink in the Beach Hotel. This place was massive but had a decent atmosphere, people dancing and smoking strange things. Good live music. We had a couple of bevvies then went to another place near our campsite – the 'friendliest bar in Byron' built in the old railway station. We ordered some food – chicken burgers – had a few drinks etc. It lashed down with insanely heavy rain. Just as we were about to leave loads of police turned up with a sniffer dog. The dog showed some interest in this one bloke who was then dragged off by the coppers. Most of the old hippies around didn't like this and started shouting, 'Sieg Heil' and stuff. Strange place.
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| The most eastern point of Australia |
Next morning we decided to 'do' the walk up to the lighthouse and see the most Eastern point of Australia. We walked along for a good 40 minutes before we found the start of the walk which was very steep. Nothing compared to the Inka Trail though, so we tramped on up, occasionally being scared by wild turkeys. We got to the 'most Eastern point' and took some photos but I was getting a little concerned about the rather large cloud that was developing and rapidly moving in over the sea. I reckoned we could probably make it to the lighthouse before it rained but Bindya wanted some more photos. We got very very wet. This was proper tropical rain – in the 20 seconds it caught us before reaching the lighthouse we got soaked through. There wasn't much to see here.
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| There's a storm coming... |
We stood around and waited for the rain to stop. It wasn't stopping. Bindya was getting increasingly unhappy about this. Even though my lovely wife is born and bred in England, she can't get used to the rain and takes it quite personally when it does rain. We went and stood in the museum for a bit. The rain didn't stop. After probably the best part of an hour we decided that the rain had lessened enough for us to make a break for it. Most of the next part of the walk was through a forested area – very pretty, lots more of the scary turkeys – long walk back through town in the rain.
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| ...bit wet... |
We headed up to Brisbane the next morning, leaving about 8ish so that we'd have plenty of time there when we arrived. What we hadn't factored in was ruch hour traffic in the morning – obviously we forget this when we don't have to go to work. We sat around in the traffic for a couple of hours but still made it to Brisbane for around 11 – the thing is, New South Wales (where we just came from) has some sort of summer daylight saving thing going on so it is an hour ahead of Queensland, so really it was only 10 in the morning – this left us plenty of time to set up and head into town. Our campsite was just on the northern outskirts of the city, we had some breakfast, went to the supermarket then set up our van. The site was OK but was very cramped – you don't really get the room you'd get in a more rural location. We got a map from the very lovely and helpful people running the site and jumped on a bus. This took us to the centre of the city in about 15-20 mins. We decided that we'd see the city from the river first as our travel ticket included unlimited bus, train and ferry travel so we walked down to the nearest pier and got on the first one that came.
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| on the ferry |
It sped up past all the bridges and out towards the suburbs which were very leafy and expensive looking. It was also pretty hot and humid. After about 20 mins it turned around and headed back again whilst being divebombed by small blue-bellied birds. I think it was because the boat was blue, they were confusing it with some giant, upside-down, drowning friend – that was my theory anyway... We went past the stop we got on at and got off on the other side of the river on the 'South Bank'. This was really nice, full of bars and cafes and a big park. It also had this enormous man-made outdoor lagoon to swim in, with a sand beach and everything.
We cursed ourselves for not bringing our cossies and sat with our feet in the water for a while, deciding that we must come back tomorrow. It was so hot all we wanted to do was dive in. We had a drink and snack at a bar overlooking the lagoon and river then went to check out cinema times, deciding to see 'Devil' later on, then we got some Vietnamese food before the film started. Film was OK not as stupid as it could have been, about 5 people stuck in a lift, gradually getting killed off because one of them is Satan. We easily found the bus back and then spent the night desperately trying to sleep as it was so insanely hot.
Next morning we decided to book a tour to the Castlemaine XXXX brewery. Our plan was to do the tour in the morning then head up to the lagoon for our swim. Unfortunately we couldn't get a tour until 2 pm so we packed our swimmers and set off to have a dip first then go to the brewery. On the bus I was reading the booking printout and in the small print was a disclaimer that due to health and safety, if we turned up wearing open shoes we'd be refused entry. Bindya had her flip flops and I had my sandals. I phoned up to check and they said no. We got off the bus, got on another bus and went back to the campsite to change. By the time we did all this we had to go straight to the brewery. We were not happy about missing our swim...
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| At the brewery |
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| Mmm...beer.... |
The brewery tour was OK – it's mainly an automated factory, not like a proper brewery, so most of the tour consisted of strange videos and talking mannequins telling us the history of XXXX. At the end we got 4 free 'pots' (about half a pint) of beer so we stayed in the bar and had some food as well. As we left there were hundreds of people coming out the station. Bindya correctly spotted them as U2 fans as there was a concert at the stadium next to the brewery. We headed home.
Day 1 Newcastle
Day 2 Coffs harbour
Day 3 and 4 Byron Bay
Day 5 and 6 Brisbane
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