Travelling Oz in our PearcyPod

Day one of our PearcyPod Adventure saw us arriving at Iluka through some periods of heavy rain but it held off enough for us to set up in the Anchorage Holiday Park - our home for the next three nights... which was to become nine nights ( but more about that later). We used this as a base to explore Iluka, Yamba, Grafton and Maclean.

We took the bikes on the ferry that runs between Iluka and Yamba and spent a lovely few hours exploring the town. Clocked up 2000km on my ebike. We started to ride through a forested nature walk, got about 50m in and the mosquitoes were so ferocious we quickly got out of there while we still had some blood.

We spent a day in Grafton visiting the art gallery (and tourist info centre), the Crown hotel overlooking the river for lunch, rode our bikes over the double storey old road and rail bridge, and visited historic Schaeffer House which was very interesting. Also took a pic of the rather impressive avenue of fig trees.

Ulmarra, just north of Grafton, was always our first stop when we travelled south with the kids when they were little. The slippery dip of doom (the old fashioned, metal, steep slide) has been replaced with safer play equipment, but the flying foxes had set up a colony in the trees around the park. We did a walking tour of the heritage buildings and had a lovely lunch at the hotel overlooking the river.

Our final day in Iluka we visited Maclean, the Scottish town. Drove to the lookout then visited the Stone Cottage and museum (very interesting). We cycled around the heritage walk, checking out the original buildings of significance. Stopped at the Argyle Hotel for lunch when Brad noticed the 2 guys at the table next to us were boys he went to school with since kindergarten - probably hadn't seen them for 30 years. They had a great time reminiscing about their youth.

When travelling, you always need to remain flexible as circumstances are constantly changing, whether it be the weather or family issues etc. On our second day, my brother contacted me to let me know dad had passed away. He had been in hospital with pneumonia and influenza and RSV. I had only spoken with him (briefly), the night before and he had improved somewhat. So, we have made the decision to return home, travel down south for his celebration of life, return and resume our travel in a couple of weeks time.Read more