Day 69 – Wednesday 24 August 2016 – Tuncurry - Kiama

Thankfully the rain cleared this morning and the grass had dried off enough in the breeze to make the remaining pack up easy.  It didn't however last long.

We checked the weather forecasts which were really bad and but as it turned out the weather was much worse than we had expected.  Rather than stop at our original planned location of Lake Macquarie and just sit in the caravan waiting for the rain to stop we decided to just keep driving in the hope we would get through it.  

The rain continued to get worse and just north of Sydney we decided to change direction and head down the east coast instead of inland to Yass.  Horrendous conditions for driving made the entire trip really quite scary with trucks flying past on both sides and virtually no visibility.  I could not believe the number of cars driving without headlights on.  You just couldn't see them approaching behind you without them.  It certainly isn't a trip I would like to repeat in a hurry and if we had had more time we probably would have just pulled over and made camp for the night.  

Finally we made it to Kiama but it was starting to get dark (well darker even than it had been throughout the dreary day) the rain was so bad I couldn't see Shane standing at the back of the van giving directions.  It was more sheer luck than good management that we got into the site and we hunkered down for the night with the heater on high, electric blankets on and our fingers crossed that we wouldn't be swept out to sea overnight.

Day 68 – Tuesday 23 August 2016 – Tuncurry

We woke this morning to a fairly overcast day but it was still warm enough to venture out and take a look around the area.  I have not been up here in many many years so there wasn't much I remembered about it.  It is however very pretty and has some lovely features.  

As we left the park we spotted the Pelicans again, biding their time until some fishermen returned from their trip no doubt.  Some did look comfortable,......

but some........

Forster has a lovely beach with a swimming pool right at the edge of the water, in fact the waves were breaking over the edge of the pool.  A little too cold though this morning for a dip.

We followed the coastal road around to Seal Rocks where we spotted a dolphin swimming in the bay.

The Great Lakes area has its name for a reason - those lakes are great - both in size and in beauty.  We did wonder though what the heck a man in a caravan was doing parked on boat ramp because it certainly wasn't a houseboat!

The day continued to be overcast which wasn't great for photos, but we had nice day touring the area.  There are lots of little towns around the lakes but there doesn't appear to be any kind of obvious industry so we did wonder what the heck all these people did for jobs!

Back at camp we were delighted to finally get the satellite dish working - not so much an issue with the dish as Foxtel.  It seems to work when it feels like it and for the most part Shane has picked up a few short live streams on his phone to watch his sport matches as we had just given up on the box working.  

Lucky we packed up the outside gear as soon as we got back to camp as it started to drizzle and rained pretty consistently all night.

The view from our door

Guard dog Scheppi on alert!

Day 67 – Monday 22 August 2016 – Coffs Harbour - Tuncurry

Ever since we have been planning this trip there is something Shane has been threatening.... errrr..... planning to do - go to Coffs Harbour to the Big Banana dressed in a Minion Onesie.  Hey - I don't ask why anymore - you just run with it!  Given we got back a little too late last night I promised to make it our first job this morning before packing up to leave since the Big B was just a couple of hundred metres down the road from our nature-strip park.

So up we got, let dogs out quickly and headed for the Big Banana.  On arrival at said location at around 7.45am you would think there wouldn't be many people around, we could get the desired photo and get back to camp without a hitch.  But then this is us we're talking about and things rarely go to plan.  What should we find when we get there but a local radio station doing an outside live broadcast from the balcony right beside the banana.  Undeterred, our little minion jumped out of the car, I took a few hurried photos and with a quick smile to the announcers we jumped in the car and were off.

Despite being up early we were quite slow getting packed up and didn't leave the park until well after 10.00am.  Being a little tired of the day to day moves, we opted to bypass our original destination of Port MacQuarie and drive 250km to Forster-Tuncurry.  Once again the roads didn't offer much interest and even views of the ocean were few and far between.  The one thing we did notice was that although there was plenty of roadkill, unlike our experiences so far there are very few large birds around taking advantage of a free feed.

We took the detour to Port Macquarie to have a quick look around before continuing on the journey.  The one thing that has been a little frustrating throughout this whole trip has been missed opportunities to take photos due to having the caravan attached to the car.  Often there is nowhere to pull over and even visiting towns has been somewhat frustrating to find a park anywhere near where you would like to go.  Consequently we didn't spend a lot of time at Port Macquarie either.

On arrival in Tuncurry and on the way to our caravan park we happened across some fishermen who were cleaning their catch for the day with a very attentive audience.  We couldn't help but stop and take some photos.  I have never actually been this close to pelicans before and hadn't realised they had so much colour on their beaks.  Like oversized seagulls they were just as bossy and cheeky and gave us plenty of entertainment and opportunities posing for photos.

Just a couple of blocks further on we arrived at our destination and camp for the next two nights to find two ducks having a paddle in the pool.  

The park was lovely and set on the river bank, although we had opted for a nice big site on a corner which was very easy to access.  Out of interest we timed ourselves to see how long it was taking us to set up these days.  15 minutes wasn't bad to hook up to power, change over fridge and freezer from battery to power, take the van off the car, let down the four corner supports, hook up to water & sullage, roll out the awning, set up the 3 puppy pens and two chairs.  HIgh five for a great job.

Day 66 – Sunday 21 August 2016 – Tweed Heads - Coffs Harbour

Our original plan for today was to head for somewhere around Byron Bay but given we were now only 66km away we decided to head for Coffs Harbour - an additional 230km.  

The good news for the morning was that Scheppi was showing some definite improvement and although not quite back to his old self, he was certainly a bit more lively than he had been yesterday.  The bad news was - I stole a Gecko.  On checking that one of the bedroom windows was locked before travelling, I discovered this little guy who had obviously crawled up onto the window yesterday at the Sunshine Coast, had been locked up and stolen from his home.  Faced with the task of either driving 200km north to take him home and rehoming him in one of the permanent resident's gardens, we bid him farewell and warned him to stay out of the way of the local Ibis who liked to stroll the camp grounds each day.

On the way out of town we filled up with fuel and couldn't believe the price of unleaded!

And although technically we had stayed in NSW overnight, our milestone of travelling in NSW began properly today.

We took a detour to visit Byron Bay along the way but unfortunately it was so busy and streets so narrow that we didn't get to spend much time there towing a 19ft caravan.

Northern NSW seem to love tunnels and they do fancy ones - sometimes it seems just because they didn't want to blast a hole in a hill to make way for a freeway.  Fancy inside as well - fans, lights (probably bells and whistles too but we had the radio on).

And bananas - on almost every hillside.  And still the sugar cane fields appear from time to time and one or two of them being burned for harvest.  We thought we had probably seen enough rats for one trip - blazing rats would just be over the top.

A little way further on we stopped to have a break and let the dogs out to stretch their legs.  I remarked to Shane that I had seen people travel with a lot of different pets but this took the cake.

The guy said he just stopped for a sandwich and next thing these two roosters appeared out of the bush.  Clever little things that they were, when he moved on they came to suss out what we might have to eat, and when we closed the door on them, they moved further down to another car that pulled up at the end of the rest area.  It's no wonder their feathers were so shiney, they scored a muffin out of us and a few scraps of bread from the other guy - so they were quite adept at conning food out of people - cheeky little buggers.

Along the way we saw some excellent examples of drunk linemarking.

And then there was this "interesting" registration plate (click to enlarge).
  

Ahhhh yes, the road was long and Shiney was bored.

We didn't arrive in Coffs Harbour until around 3.00pm and had a bit of difficulty locating a van park that took dogs.  At first glance the park we did choose looked a bit dodgy and we had to laugh at our site when we finally did pull in as it was a bit like camping on someone's nature-strip.  There was the Highway, a grassy verge, a narrow track that looked more like a footpath than the road it was supposed to be and then our site.  However the noise wasn't so bad, the power worked and water came out of the tap, so it was far from the worst campsite we've had along the way.

We did a quick tour before dark to see what Coffs Harbour had to offer.  I thought the strangest thing was that Coffs Harbour itself is about 3km from the actual harbour.  If we hadn't gone looking for it, we would have thought Coffs was pretty small.  The jetty provided some interesting photographic opportunities before we did a quick grocery shop and headed back to our nature-strip for the night.