Never before have I witnessed such calculatedly slick selling of alcohol as I have in Oz. You don't even have to get out of your car to pick up a 6-pack of Tooheys New, or a tasty 7 dollar bottle of Eaglehawk, oh no. Just point the nose of your Holden towards the nearest drive through 'bottle shop', make the big effort to peel down your window, roar the order at whatever unfortunate happens to be staffing the drive counter and watch them scurry off up a ladder/do backflips to the fridge and grab your hootch. Service.
If you do dare a foray out of your vehicle via a momentary scorch from the sun to a walk in variety of bottler, then you are in for a treat. Picture a cash and carry run by Eamonn Dunphy, imagine what Willy Wonka's factory would have looked like had he been a lovechild of Arthur Guinness...well dream no more and open thine eyes mi amigo (cue angelic singing and harps a-ringing) ...and marvel.
Ok I'm getting carried away..I'm just amazed at the scale, branding, level of advertisement, cheapness and general profligacy of booze out here, its ridiculous and I wanted to throw it out there.
Now to the point - after leaving Denman in the rain the last thing on our minds was drink. We hit the road toward the coast and after a few hours decided on checking out Newcastle. Like its Geordie namesake it's a big uncompromising industrial hub populated by lots of white people with bad teeth. Huge tankers puff in and out of the docklands laden down with coal from the surrounding mines. In fact it's the biggest coal export harbour in the world, and my is it not pretty. The place was deserted on a Thursday evening at about 8pm, so that boded well for our plans of a quiet few nights. We stayed in the Backpackers by the Beach, again empty, and spent the first night between an excellent Hare Chrishna restaurant called Govinda's and the cinema. Rock and tofu Roll.
We got up early the next morning and walked out to the lighthouse at the end of Newcastle Beach before going for a run along the coast southwards past Mereweather Beach. The afternoon was spent in the city catching up on Christmas shopping along the Hunter Mall. We cooked in the hostel and went to the cinema for the second night in a row to see the new Bond.
Saying a less than tearful farewell to Newcastle we made our way up the coast road past the rolling dunes of Stockton Bight towards Port Stephens. Past Anna Bay and One Mile Beach and into Nelsons Bay proper the only thing that caught my interest in terms of land based activity in the area was eating pies. Red Ned's have won the NSW Pie Competition more times than...well more times than any other pie shop in town. I had a kangaroo terriyaki followed by a prawn and lobster and both in fairness, were delicious. I had wanted to pick up a body board so managed to get my hands on one in nearby Salamander Bay before we camped up for the night in Shoal Bay, a sleepy little gathering on a picturesque headland a couple of kilometres from Nelsons Bay. After a quick jog up through Tomaree National Park around a few WWII gun emplacements and back down onto Zenith Beach, we came to our senses and bought some red wine to wash down our red meat dindins.
The sun shone for us the next morning, so we engaged in some ''skin trauma" (as the Australian Health Promotion Board ever so sweetly term sun bathing) on Shoal Bay beach, a beautifully secluded spot for a post brekky swim. Then on to One Mile Beach where I jumped straight into the surf and got pounded around for about an hour on my body board. The waves were up to about 5 feet and pretty powerful, I loved it!
The next morning we got up early, hit the beach again for a few hours and then made our way towards Myall National Park. When we arrived in Bungadelah we stocked up on food and called into the information centre to grab some maps and made our way out along the coast towards Seal Rocks and Treachery Camp. A guy in the hostel in Newcastle had recommended Treachery as a the most beautiful spot along this part of the east coast, so we weren't going to miss it.
The camp itslelf is a couple of miles out along a dirt road and is in a bush setting. Its incredibly secluded, and nestles in a belt of swaying eucalyptus trees behind a series of huge sand dunes. We set ourselves up and took a walk on the beach to watch the sunset over a bottle of wine.
Up early again, the weather had turned on us and we made our way up to Sugar Loaf Point Lighthouse to take in the views before driving through Palm Springs (shaking our fists at the weather because the beaches looked so beautiful) and along the Lakes Way through the rest of the park. We arrived in Forster for lunch and ran into the Boxfish Cafe for shelter from the rain and some pumpkin soup. The caravan park right on the breakwater looked good so we checked in their and spent the afternoon catching up on emails in the local Bowling Club. In no mood to cook and fairly miserable with all the wet, we grabbed some fish and chips for dinner and called it an early night - not much to get up to in town without the sun!..
..which appeared for us again on the following morning. The moods shifted fairly rapidly and we walked out to One Mile Beach and back, stopping in the ocean baths at Forster to cool off afterwards. In the town we bought a few supplies, had lunch down by the waterfront and drove back to the beach for some body board action again. That night we stumbled across Happy Halliday's camping ground, a lovely caravan park populated by lorikeets, and chilled out there for the evening.
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