Homeward bound, one sleep left

We did not want to leave Surfers Paradise. It was the sunniest warmest day and we really just wanted to play at the beach.

As every morning, I look out from the balcony and look for sea life. I saw whales again today. 3 days of whales and one with a pod of dolphins. The photo below is actually a photo from yesterday that I was able to capture.

We had to clean the apartment before heading off. We sent the kids down to the beach to play soccer and of course they made friends. Friends with a family from Melbourne and who play for Waverley baseball. Brandon went up to him as he was wearing the baseball cap. The boys played soccer and the girls waded in the ocean and did gymnastics.

We left about an hour later than what we wanted as the kids were enjoying the other kids' company and the mom was lovely to chat with, and the sun and beach weren’t making it easy to leave.

We had a 6 hour drive south to Forster, NSW. ( pronounced as Foster). I picked Forster as it had nice reviews as a seaside town. It was bigger than we expected as it’s kind of like an island and the other town Tuncurry is on the other side of the bridge.

We stopped in Maclean for lunch. It is the Scottish town of Australia. It was a different town, not a cute little seaside town which I was expecting. It had little boutique shops that are expensive but then the locals didn’t look like they could afford the shops. It had one grocery store which was not a Coles, IGA or Woolies. This was probably the first time on our trip that I noticed indigenous people. There was also no drinking signs throughout the park. Maclean only had about 2000 people. I wouldn’t suggest this would be a town to stay overnight.

While we were driving we saw hundreds of fruit bats on the side of the road hanging from trees. There was no place to stop and look but it was pretty cool to see.

On our trip we started reading the book, UFO - Unavoidable Family Outing. The plan was to read every day which hasn’t happened, but we will finish it before the trip ends.

We didn’t get into Forster till dark, kids had Subway for dinner and Josh and I split a lamb/halloumi dish from a Persian restaurant. It was supposed to be an early night but we still didn’t get to bed till 930pm. Inara is ready to get home, not wanting to sleep, and Brandon fell asleep in seconds.

Odometer start: 112599
Odometer end: 113161
Total today : 562km
Total trip: 3090kmRead more