Kiwis down under check-in 16th December 2010
Crikey old St Nick is just about to descend on us in just over a week and looks like I haven't updated this in 2 weeks..soooo looking back there have been some highs and lows. We continued on with our stay in Sydney doing such things as riding the ferry into the city from Manly, wandered round Paddy's Market and the city. We got to spend a wonderful afternoon catching up with friends Carmel and Ross from home who were over in Sydney for another Eagles Concert. Another day saw us heading to Bondi for a dip at this famous beach. There was a visit out to Parramatta to visit Mary Morgan (sister of Lloyd's) who is a doctor specializing in emergency care in Helicopter retrieval, she took us to the HIRT base in Parramatta where the helicopter operation is run from, was very interesting, fingers and toes crossed she never has to attend to us! Another day out on the bike took us to Palm Beach and boy did we see some expensive real estate there and saw Summer Bay(where the teen soap Home and Away is filmed…go on admit it you do know it J) The finale in Sydney was the Linkin Park concert at Acer Arena out at the Olympic Village and it was totally awesome! Last Sunday saw us leaving our wonderful Host Family, Robin, Gillian and Luca with whom we had an awesome stay and headed up to Newcastle and over to the camping ground at Stockton..had a swim there..not for the faint hearted as water temps were anything but warm. Wandered down the breakwater that has many plaques to various ships lost on the sand bars over the years, great talking to local fishermen & an awesome sunset too. From Newcastle (Stockton) we went up the coast to Nelsons Bay and its lighthouse, the coast up here is littered with inland harbours all very pretty then followed coast through Pacific Palms to Forster. Pretty hot and steamy and hungry so a picnic and a cooling dip in the saltwater pool (most of the beaches seem to have these pools at one end of the beach, a safer area for children maybe or is it that they are mostly wildlife free too?) Found a very nice tropical campground here..in middle of the night round 4am heard all these things flying round making noises like monkeys, turns out they were large fruit bats feeding in the fruit in the palms above our tent.
Next morning packed up(getting oh so weary of ..out by 10am)took ourselves off to Australia's National Motorbike Museum at Nabiac,which had a very impressive 800 odd motorbikes..at least 10 of which Bevin(remember this is a museum haha) has ridden and many more he'd always dreamed of owning, if you love bikes this a place you'd not want to miss. We hauled in to Port Macquarie, sad couldn't find a café to serve us a coffee near the beach so hit the road..rest of day did a big sad downhill slide when my iphone did the same off my bike somewhere on Pacific Highway bout 40 k's South of Macksville..after a brief look had to move fast as rain storm hit us, we reached Sawtell(just South of Coffs Harbour)..well I can tell you morale was at a low ebb that night.. we never bothered to get any food so 2 Salmon sandwiches for Bevin and 2 handfuls of trailmix for me and it was lights out. So next morning(yesterday) decided to go back and have a look..about 8k's I walked and no joy, just heat exhaustion. Oh he was working..research I think it's called(translation.. how to get another ifone to my cousin Lara's in the least possible time)..to be fair he did ride down road briefly to give me the much needed water bottle. Stopped at a MacDonalds for further rehydration..then trundled on up to Coffs Harbour, bought another cheap phone for the interim, bought some food (another night of trailmix wasn't lookin so inviting and on another locals advice found a pretty camp at Moonee Beach North of Coffs Harbour, pretty tiring day for some, one would ask why the one that had been on her feet literally half the day in heat, dehydrating and getting scorched was the one cooking tea to revive the one that had been in the rest area minding the bikes?
Here we are tonight in South Ballina, we've spent the day dodging rain storms, after leaving Moonee Beach..the iphone (Bevin's) has a handy application in Oz weather called a rain radar in real time, so headed undercover at a MacDonalds in Grafton to wait out the worst of it..and leach on their free wifi
Walked to the beach tonight and sat watching an electrical storm further down coast
Think from now on it aint gona be drought we are looking at..the wet season is upon us.
--
Bevin & Felicity Lealand iPhone
+61412205936
http://bikersfromdownunder-lealand.blogspot.com/
No comments:
Post a Comment