Corlette

We spent the night at the Bulahdelah Bowling Club RV Stop. The clubhouse was open and we had dinner there. Bun was surprised to see a notice in the ladies toilets warning about drinks being spiked. Does that really go on in a bowling club?

During the night we were serenaded by bullfrogs, (well frogs) and awoken by a kookaburra family. We set off to Nelson Bay on the Karuah River. Shortly after arriving we could see rain in the distance so decided to get to a snorkelling place in the marine park - we wouldn’t want to get wet while snorkelling!

There were lots of fish, but the sky was dull and overcast so the colours weren’t bright. Without wetsuits we became cold and didn’t swim for more than 20 minutes. After the swim we went back to Bertha to get warm and have a hot drink.

The largest moving sand dune site was a few miles away, but only accessible by 4x4 so thought we’d give that a miss, especially in the rain.

Decided to carry on to Newcastle, the sixth largest city in Australia and visit their museum. The museum appeared to have been transformed into a children’s museum for the holiday. The two things I learnt about Newcastle is that it produced a lot of steel in the steel works and that there was an earthquake there in 1999. The earthquake and aftermath had been recorded by a film crew who had been filming the Newcastle bus dispute that was going on at the time. Had the buses been running, fatalities may have been greater as more people may have been able to get to the city and it was pedestrians who were killed when shop fronts fell on them. Newcastle is also a large port. There was also an interesting documentary on a canoe that was made from ark, in the traditional aborigine way, by a family with an aborigine background.

We found a camp site at Wangi Point Caravan Park right next to Wangi Wangi Point. We overlook Awaba Lake that is looking rather dark at the moment. Fingers crossed for sunshine tomorrow.Read more