Day 19 - Manning Point
Awoke early, the waves were crashing and my bed was a bit lonely so after my coffee in bed, I dressed and headed to the beach - all before 8am! It was beautiful down by the water at that hour, so I paddled and wandered and tried to take artistic photos like this one.
Back to the van for a shower and then I was sitting having breakfast in the sun just after 9am. There were a lot more clouds about than the last two days - possibly a sign of things to come over the next few days (predicting a bit of rain in these parts this weekend). We had planned on walking through "town" along the river this morning before elevenses and then doing a longer beach walk later but as we approached the cafe/restaurant where we had thought we'd have dinner and Neill went in for "have a chat", he then decided we could have coffee and caker there for elevenses. We sat on the deck over the river and enjoyed that very much, and heard stories from the owner of the massive floods last year that destroyed the oysters beds and ruined his jetty. As we left we spied a small park at the end of the street and decided to explore, as there seemed to be a path through the trees. So feeling very much like intrepid explorers, we wound our way through thick bush, up hill and down dale, coming out over a sand dune (difficult for short people like me!) at this.
From there, we walked back along the beach which made us quite hot by the time we got back to the vans so it was off to the pool for a cooling swim. The water temperature was pretty good and we were the only ones there so we enjoyed it very much - the two older "kids" enjoyed playing on the waterslide!
Back to the van for lunch, and a quiet afternoon reading. The wind picked up which made it a bit cool but we chased the sun and sat between the vans which sheltered us a bit. We had our pre dinner drinks and nibbles in the same spot but decided jeans and long sleeves might be in order for dinner, given we were to be sitting on the river.
We arrived at the cafe/restaurant, were greeted by Chilli the dog and took our seats on the balcony. Tonight was pizza night so we pre-ordered our seafood pizzas and they soon emerged hot and smelling delicious.
It was a very enjoyable evening and we discussed how small towns like this would often be overlooked by many visitors, aiming for the 'big name' coastal locations. But we really like this place - great weather, laid back, no commercialism, a stunning beach, friendly locals - we'd come back.
As we left the cafe and were saying our goodnights to the chatty owner - and who knows how we got onto this - but his girlfriend lives in the same place as my brother and of course, Andrew knows her! What a small world.
Day 18 - Manning Point
The halfway point of my trip - and we should have been checking in to the Clarence Valley Music Muster. But, mother nature had other plans. We recently saw photos of the paddocks we were meant to be camping in and there is no way hundreds of caravans would have been able to navigate the mud.
Mind you, you look at the weather where we are and you wouldn't say it was wet and muddy.
A very quiet, lazy morning. Two cups of coffee in bed, breakfast, shower, dishes and even put a load of washing on in my van. We went for a short walk before elevenses to check out the bowls club and decided to have dinner there tonight. Hung the washing out, then headed out on our most energetic part of the day - a walk to the point (Manning Point) where the river flows into the ocean. Turns out it was a 5km round trip from our vans but oh, so worth it. Not a cloud in the sky, brilliant blue water, white waves, glistening sand - and not a soul to be seen.
This screen shot of Google Maps shows the peninsula we walked on out to the point.
We had earned our lunch after that, and a rest with a bit of reading. I contemplated going for a swim but the pool had too many people in it and I wasn't convinced the ocean was warm enough (although I got wet up to my knees on our walk). Instead, Neill and I played with some of my new car/caravan toys until it was time for dinner. The Bowls Club is next door to the caravan park and surprisingly, there was quite a crowd in there for dinner on a Thursday night. It was a predominantly Chinese menu and was pretty good - all freshly cooked and well served. Our entertainment was the raffle draw for the 20 meat trays - some people won up to 4 of them!
A cup of tea around the campfire rounded out a beautiful day - made even better by the fact we didn't have to drive anywhere!
Day 17 - Lake Liddell to Manning Point (278km)
The last six days have all been driving days, which can get a bit wearing after a while. Given our music festival was cancelled, we had been exploring what we could fill our time in with. We had decided to head towards the coast at Newcastle and explore along this section of the NSW coast, none of us having done it recently or with vans. However, not being fans of caravan parks at the best of times, we didn't want to land at a commercialised, overpriced park just because of where it was. So last night's research led us to this rustic charmer. And with a beach like this alongside the park, who can complain?!
Neill's favourite geese were on hand to greet us this morning at Lake Liddell. I did see a peclian while I was having my coffee so that made me happy. In extraordinary timeliness on our part, we were ready to leave by 9:14am! On the road, and we knew most of our driving today would be on freeways. As we skirted Newcastle and headed north on the M1 Pacific Motorway, it did occur to me that this was my first time on a freeway since I left Berwick!
Elevenses was in the suburb of Beresfield - not quite where Jude had wanted us to go but we ended up at Cafe on Lawson in this lower socio economic suburb. The coffee was reasonably good, the banana bread also OK and we felt good for supporting a small business run by two young ladies who were giving it a go.
Up the freeway to Bulahdelah for lunch at the Showgrounds - and far fancier showgrounds they were compared to our campsite in Koorawatha the other night.
Back on the freeway for our last 95km and we turned off the freeway just near Taree and took some rather ordinary roads out to this peninsula. It's a fairly remote little town, with not many facilities, and a rustic caravan park (that still manages to carry the Big 4 brand!). After setting up, we went for a 3km walk along the beach and what a stunning beach it is. I'm looking forward to lying in bed listening to the waves crash all night long. So happy with our chosen site that we've decided to stay 3 nights. So, here's to sleep ins and walks along the beach.
Day 16 - Balliemore to Lake Liddell (251km)
A big day of driving today. The total trip mileage mightn't look it, but we spent a lot of time sitting in roadworks and behind/in front of trucks. The countryside was also not very interesting so thank goodness for audio books.
Early elevenses in Dunedoo; lunch and fuel in Merriwa and arrived at the Lake Liddell Recreation Area at about 3pm.
An interesting place - the lake has some dangerous amoeba living in it so you can't touch or fish in the water; there is a large coal fired power station easily seen from one angle which is in the process of being decommissioned; there is a site office for the decommissioning on another side; and coal trains running regularly (like between every half hour to hour) across the road. However, if you look at this view (which is how we have positioned our vans to look at), you wouldn't know any of that.
Plenty of birdlife, including my favourites the pelicans, and our not-so-favourite geese, no neighbours close by, water views - it almost ticks many of our campsite criteria boxes. But a strange place. We had a bit of a read in the sun, pre-dinner drinks, then we lit the fire (for ambience - it's warm enough again to not need it for warmth), had our dinner and watched the moon rise again.
If you look closely to the left in this picture of the stunning sky at sunset, you can see the power station.
Day 15 - Koorawatha to Balliemore (241km)
After the noisy rain and thunder of last night, the day dawned bright and sunny, although much cooler than recent days.
We were on the road by 9:30am, got fuel in Cowra, and kept going until Wellington where we stopped for lunch. Deciding to treat ourselves to lunch out, we searched for suitable caravan parking and headed to the Four Cats Coffee shop (located in the former Sacred Heart Kindergarten) for lunch, which was lovely. A small shop at the local Coles and we were on the road again. Imagine our surprise to see these solar farms just north of Wellington (obviously not my photo) extending for hundreds of acres. Ironically, I had just finished an audio book (fiction) based on the pros and cons of solar farms.
The rattle in my car is still bothering me and no Ford dealer I ring that might be along our route can fit me in. I got a bit overwhelmed with it all this afternoon - it's hard having to shoulder the responsibility for everything when you've been able to share the load for the last 24 years.
We arrived at the Hair of the Dog Inn at Balliemore in time for afternoon tea. Free camping out the front (along a railway line, but no-one can tell us when a train might come along so we're not too worried) and we had a meal inside. Really quite a lovely country pub, although it was very quiet in there tonight. Our meals were pretty good and we felt good for supporting them.
Back to the van before sunset and we thought we'd still have a fire as it really is quite cool tonight. Nice and warm, and we got to watch the almost-full moon rise over my caravan while we had our tea.
Day 14 - Bethungra Dam to Koorawatha (119km)
Today was all about timing - and weather!
The day dawned hot and windy at Bethungra Dam. We had worried the wind would affect our ability to have a fry up, because Sunday mornings are fry-up breakfasts! But nothing an induction cooktop, an airfryer and an indoor gas cooktop couldn't fix - doesn't really sound like camping, does it?! So we enjoyed our breakfast and contemplated what to do. The wind was coming from the direction we needed to go in so we knew that would impact fuel consumption. Rain and thunderstorms were forecast for hundres of kilometres north of us. But we didn't really want to stay where we were because it was on top of a hill and a bit too close to trees. so we bit the road a bit after 10am, with the view that we'd stop when the weather got bad.
Cootamundra was our stop for elevenses. It was still pretty hot although the wind was less vigorous there than where we'd come from. We enjoyed our elevenses in the park where the Cricket Captains Walk was. Now this was very well done - bronze bust sculptures of every Test Captain since the beginning in a walk around a life size statue of Bradman batting, because Cootamundra is the birthplace of Don Bradman. Now this is a much more interesting reason to visit Cootamundra than my childhood visits here - to see stallions at horse studs. Apparently not even a good enough incentive for my cricket mad brother though (because he is undoubtedly still scarred from our childhood visits).
Not long after we left, we had the first rain drops on the windscreen. We had identified a few potential camp sites to pull off into if the weather got too bad, but we made it to here at Koorawatha with black skies to the west of us. We got into position at the Showgrounds literally just as it started to rain. And boy did it storm. Thunder, lightning and torrential rain - we were so glad we were off the road.
A bit of lunch, some reading and housekeeping and then the skies cleared so we though we'd go for a walk - also because we had to pay our camp fees at the pub. We did get a few more drops of rain fall on us but we got to the pub unscathed and amused ourselves watching the Sunday Euchre Championship underway. The pub was formerly known as the Bang Bang Hotel (established in 1894) and "famous" for a failed hold up by renowned bushranger Ben Hall. After our beer and perhaps snobbish conclusion that this pub was not for us, we went for a walk around town. There are absolutely no shops or anything left - just lots of empty buildings and some historic houses. Population last census was 450.
The rain cleared in the late afternoon so we emerged feeling optimistic we could have drinks and nibbles by the fire, and maybe even dinner. As the evening wore on, the skies darkened considerably to the west and the BOM radar showed heavy rain and thunderstorms by 8:10pm. We finished our dinner, and sat spellbound by the amazing thunder and lightning show all around us - until the rain really did start and we retrated indoors again. What a show!
(despite the hundreds of photos I took, I couldn't manage one with the lightning in it!)
Day 13 - Police Paddocks to Bethungra Dam (224km)
A day of twists and turns. The biggest one is that our music festival we were booked into from Thursday in the Clarence Valley has been cancelled due to the weather. This is really disappointing, not least because Greg had chosen this festival back in January and we really wanted to honour him by going. We haven't quite worked out what we'll do instead.
It was a warm night overnight near the Murray - I slept with all the windows open and the fan on and was just right! In fact, I had the best sleep I have had on this trip! Possibly because it was so quiet. And who can go wrong with waking to this view from bed.
However, it very quickly warmed up and was 30C before we left! We did fit in a short walk before leaving but it really was pretty warm. We headed up some country roads for just under an hour, before stopping for elevenses in the very sleepy town of Brocklesby which had a very fancy recreation reserve. Fun fact - the town is "famous" for an RAAF plane crash in 1940 where two planes crashed into each other but managed to land because one plane got stuck to the top of the other and nobody died. We continued up the road and by the time we got to Yerong Creek for lunch, it was 34C! Yerong Creek was a very sad little town with next to no buildings open but a very pretty garden and water mural.
Today was the biggest driving day of this trip and despite it only being 224km, it seemed to take us a long time! We did try to avoid the main highways. It turns out the big driving days get a bit lonely when you're the only one in the car. I have a great audio book and Neill and Jude at the other end of the CB radio, but it's definitely not the same.
We pulled into Bethungra Dam at 4pm, when it was still pretty hot. A nice reserve with plenty of spots to camp but not many of them are level and being a weekend, it was pretty full. In the end, we found ourselves a spot on top of the hill with great views and away from the people. Some drinks, a great walk to the lookout and dam wall before pre-dinner nibbles and Thai Sticky Chicken for dinner. The sunset was pretty, it cooled down to a pleasant temperature and again we lit the fire for ambience. We're doing well so far in finding camp sites we haven't been to before but will now have to rethink our itinerary with the cancellation of the music event - and the forecast rain for tomorrow.
