Thursday, 15th February 2018
I am writing today’s diary while sitting outside the van watching the sunset over the South West Rock’s beach and Arakoon Nature Reserve Park, at the Macleay Valley Coast, where we are staying for two nights. It is magical and at the same time so peaceful – and we have the kangaroos hopping around us and keeping the grass short!. Anyway let me start with the beginning of the day……..
This morning we were up quite early – without an alarm clock – well our first campsite we’ve tried out at Lemon Tree Entrance (to Nelson Bay) was a success. We had a good pitch with all amenities – water and electricity and a very good shower unit. We didn’t have to use our facilities in our van except for cooking!
Breakfast was quite meager this morning as we only had yoghurt some cherries and mixed seeds and nuts and I made a protein turmeric drink for us – this meant after showering, we were off by 8.30 a.m. and our plan was to drive some 250 km to South West Rocks – not far above Port Macquarie. Gerry drove the van this morning – I am wondering whether I will try driving this truck – it’s far too big for me – anyway Gerry is making a very good job of it after our nervous drive last Monday!! Anyway as yesterday we had made some sort of a planning to driving up north and where we would be stopping over, I programmed our GPS as far as Byron Bay – some 600 km further north.
The first thing we wanted to do is stop at a Macdonald’s as we wanted to get some WIFI – Our camp did not offer a good WIFI service so we’ve been out of touch with the outside world for a couple of days and I am writing up my diary in a Word document to transcribe later on to my blog! So even Gerry is nowadays happy to see a Macdonald’s and their coffee is of an acceptable level!!
We got off the Pacific Highway a couple of times to experience other sceneries than the fast motorway – strange that I am considering the speed limit of 110km fast when in Holland we drive so much faster (even above the 130km limit!!!) Well sometimes we had to reverse our route as some roads just ended on the beach after going through forestland. At one point – Diamond Beach – we could see the forest just ending on the beach for a really long curve – so what we thought to drive slowly along the coast did not actually happen all the way.
After a few stops, we finally made it to South West Rocks just before 16.00 and then, although we had already viewed which campsite we wanted to stay over – right in the middle of the village of South West Rocks and running down to the beach, we were disappointed as there was no vacancy for us. Go through Lonely Planet I found 2 more campsites and one being on the mouth of the river and the other in the Nature Reserve. We opted to go straight to the one at the Nature Reserve as this was situated right on the beach – and although there is no power, we have all other amenities.
Lucky for us, there was a pitch free on the second row facing the ocean and as soon as we parked our van, we were ready to go down for a swim – It was heavenly – the Pacific Ocean was warm and calm to swim. Both Gerry and I really enjoyed this and most of all as it was not too busy and we had the beach to ourselves. The sun was still warm and after drying up we were back at our van and after taking a drink, I started cooking – of course it’s campsite food and we still had pasta and enough vegetables to make a sauce and to top it all a fried egg! It was really tasty!
As I had cooked, Gerry did the washing up and I took my laptop outside and wrote up the day as the sun was setting.
Tomorrow will be a leisure day but also we will have time to explore the old gaol house situated up on top of the cliff!
