Rain and Other Inconveniences

As I write this, we are copping rain heavier than we have since the start of our journey. I'm pleased to say that we are reasonably waterproof, although we are certainly not sound proof! The sound of rain is deafening both inside the caravan (on the tin roof) and inside the annex (on the awning roof). I'm just glad we're on a concrete slab this time round - slabs are an inch or two above ground level, so the theory is you are dry, even if the ground is sodden. Happy to see the rain - we desperately need it of course - but not looking forward to the possibility of packing down in pouring rain again. Not fun.

I have been out of action this week a bit - I seem to have caught Grace's lurgy, and have been quite ill with a sore throat, runny nose, and a horrible cough. I am on the improve, but certainly far from my best -definitely getting better not worse. Whew.

We really like Manning Point - it's sleepy and has real character. It *is* however without conveniences like a supermarket, which makes food shopping somewhat hard (given our very small fridge) but it's nothing we can't overcome with a bit of planning. It's an 80km round trip to Taree, so you don't want to be running that journey every day.

We went for a walk out to the ocean side of Manning Point today (it's a bit sad it's taken 5 days of us being here to do that) but glad we did it. Grace had a ball walking in the shallows, splashing around when the waves came in, and generally getting sand everywhere.
Manning Point's beach is your standard ocean beach - you could walk for miles. Plenty of fishermen there, fishing for whiting, which they tell me sit in the gutter about 20 metres off shore, either side of high tide. Bait is not an issue - just dig yourself some pipis (incidentally some of the largest I have ever seen - maybe 2-3 inches across).

On Tuesday we move to Port Stephens (Anna Bay) for 2 weeks. We're taking a punt on the 2 weeks thing - everyone tells us how special the place is, so we figured we'd stay for a couple of weeks. Why not!?

Hospitals

Last night was not a good night. Grace woke up about 3am and would not stop whimpering, crying, and screaming. She was in such a state that she was seemingly finding it difficult to get enough air into her lungs. This is VERY unlike her - she normally calms down within a few minutes, and normally just whimpers if she's upset or in pain. To be honest, it scared the living daylights out of us. Without trying to be one of "those crazy annoying parents" (mentioned in an earlier post) we decided that we needed to get her into the hospital post haste to make sure there wasn't something bad going on.

We drove Schumacher-speed into Taree hospital, with Grace seemingly even more upset most of the way there, until she stopped screaming about 15 minutes into the 20 minute trip. She was still obviously very upset, but at least she had stopped screaming. At this point, we wondered whether we should turn around and go back, but decided to get her checked out (right decision, as she started screaming again soon after). We saw a particularly disinterested-looking doctor, who looked in ears, eyes, throat, and used his magic thermometer and stethoscope, and said there was nothing major wrong, and that she had an ear infection (probably bought on from the head cold she has had the last few days), gave us some antibiotics, and sent us on our way. Although she yelled most of the time we were at the hospital, Grace finally fell asleep on the (decidedly slower) trip back to Manning Point. I am not quite sure who was more relieved - her or us. I reckon it was us, but it's not a competition...

Thankfully, Grace seems fine this morning - apart from basically climbing into her cot by herself an hour before her normal morning nap time (previously unheard of behaviour), you would never know about last night's adventures. And who said being a parent was boring?

On another note, for those who think GPS in-car navigation units are an expensive toy, think again. Picture this - you're in Manning Point, needing to get medical help in a real hurry. You think there's probably a hospital in Taree, but you don't know - there'd definitely be one in Port Macquarie, but that's another 40 minutes up the road. Do you go to Taree and drive around looking for a street sign, in the hope that they have a hospital??  Do you call someone and ask?? (Oh that's right - you don't have any mobile reception, and the local payphones only work when it hasn't rained for over a week - no kidding). 4 clicks on our GPS, and it lists the 5 closest hospitals - you choose the closest one that has an after hours emergency, and it navigates you to the doorstep, and even estimates your travel time, and what time you'll get there. Absolutely brilliant. We use it extensively on our trip for more mundane things, like working out, for example, how many kilometres and the likely travel time between Brisbane and Rainbow Beach, and having it warn us about upcoming speed cameras - not critically important things, but it makes life oh so much easier. Sometimes though, like last night, it really does come through for you, and makes you think "what would I do without it?". Tomtom nav units ROCK.

Manning Point

We arrived at Manning Point today. To get here, you turn off the Pacific Highway at the Taree exit, and go over around 30km of the worst road you will see for a long time. To put the road into perspective, our car when towing occasionally bottoms out on its weight distribution hitch when you go over a speed bump - it has never scraped the road other than that. It bottomed out 6 (count them) times between the highway and here. Quite impressive really! No damage done, but still surprises you when it happens. You also get to drive over a narrow bridge about 100m in length, which is not only narrow, but also blind - there is no way a car-and-caravan could get over it with a car coming the other way. Since it's blind, you can't see if there is another car on the other side of the bridge (coming towards you) until you get halfway across - you have to basically take your chances and hope nothing's coming towards you. Great stuff!

Once you get here, you realise it's a small but beautiful place. We drove every single street of the suburb (no kidding) and it took us 3 minutes. There is one convenience store, a bowls club (giving you a good hint as to what demographic lives here mainly), 2 caravan parks, and a bunch of houses - that's about it. We estimate about 400-500 people live in the suburb, in total. It's a point, with the Manning River on one side, and a fantastic surf beach on the other side. I wish we had a 4wd, so I could make use of the beach entry points.

The park here is great - quiet and clean, and cheap to boot. They have a great toddlers playground (designed for kids Grace's age - quite unusual) and one of those fully enclosed trampolines, so your kids can have a jump and don't hurt themselves. No mobile phone coverage, and only marginal wireless internet - not sure if that's a curse or a blessing to be honest.

Grace has a head cold at the moment, poor little thing. We think that's why she's not been sleeping well the last night or two - if it gets any worse we're off to the doctor's, but we're hoping it's a sniffle and will just go away. We don't want to be one of these parents who go to the doctor's every time our kid sneezes, but equally, if it's something they can help with, you want to do what you can. Like everything it's a balance.

Oh, and Anna beat me at Scrabble while we were at Port Macquarie. Not impressed.

Farewell Port...

Today was our last day at Port Macquarie ("Port" to the locals. If I was a local, I reckon I would call it "Port Mac" or "Porty Mac" just to make it sound a little bit gangsta. Or maybe not...)

One thing we have reacquainted ourselves with here is the fantastic opening hours for supermarkets. We really miss this from our Melbourne days!! While suffering a little bit of insomnia on Friday night, I decided to take a bit of a walk into town - and was stunned to see the local Coles open and trading - at 11.45pm. I went in and bought a bottle of Coke (Coke Zero, incidentally - the choice of champions) and said to the bored looking register guy "wow, you're open till midnight", to which he replied, "yeah we don't open 24 hours any more". Port Mac is obviously bigger and more 21st century than we originally thought - more so than Brisbane anyhow.

We hired a little half cabin boat and had a cruise on the Hastings River today - it was quite pleasant and it was fun to drive the boat all around the river and canal estates. I have never actually driven a motor boat before, so it was a new experience for me. 8 Horses of raw power! Grace didn't like wearing a lifejacket, but didn't get much choice in the matter. A very pleasant way to spent the afternoon.

Tomorrow we head to Manning Point, which is only about 100km away. Short trips are good in some ways (not spending all day in the car), but you somehow hardly feel like it's worth the effort of packing up and setting up again. Still, feels good to be moving on.

Port Macquarie

Port Macquarie and I got off on the wrong foot because we are staying in such a crappy caravan park. My first impression was based on the Sundowner Breakwall park which is the worst caravan park we have stayed on so far. They don't give you concrete slabs for your annexe, you have to camp on dirt and sand. And talking of dirt and sand, their amenities are filthy. It is a huge park with over 260 sites, so there are a LOT of people using the amenities. Surely they should clean them twice a day to keep up with the mess that people make!

Anyway, I spent the first five or so days here thinking that Port Macquarie sucked. I'm over that now,... now that I've had a chance to explore the rest of the town. The rest of Port Macquarie does not suck. In fact, it is quite cool. Some of the week's highlight include eating out at the Pancake Place (my favourite food from my favourite valentine), walking along the Breakwall at twilight, cruising the Hastings River mouth and canals in a little boat, checking out the regional art gallery. I also have to mention one place that was absolutely fantastic - it is a shop called "In It @ Port". It is one of those funky gift shops like LOOT or whatever, but so much better. The people who run the store must have a great eye, because everything in there was gorgeous. I would love to go back there and do my Christmas shopping for every female friend and relative all in one gorgeous hit. Anyway, had to mention it. They were great.

Grace has been teething the past couple of days. That means that we don't get much sleep and hence we are grumpy and growling at each other. It also mucks up our routine as both of us try to tag team. While one catches up on their sleep, the other babysits Grace. Having a toddler in a caravan is definitely challenging.

[sigh]

Creatures of the Deep

The last few days have been very exotic on the sea creatures front!

Firstly, before we left South West Rocks, I decided to have a final fish for half an hour in the river there. As I have mentioned before, I'm keen to catch me a pan sized fish on this trip, considering I haven't done so for a good 15-20 years I reckon. Anyhow, nothing was happening, and I was about to pack up and go back to the van when WHOMP, something walloped my line, and took off. Words cannot describe this moment - my fishing rod is bent pretty much in half, with the tip almost touching my hands. This monster is taking line off me at a great rate of knots, and I'm thinking I'm going to need to acquire a bigger frypan to cook this thing, then.... nothing. Line goes slack. Significantly rude words come out of my mouth, as I assume it's thrown the hook. I then proceed to wind in, and find that for some odd reason, my line is very heavy, but not with anything that feels remotely like a fish - more like a heavy rock or something. I figure this is odd, so I wind in, for maybe 30 metres until I see the line getting closer to the bank, then this thing explodes again, and jumps out of the water in front of my eyes, still atached to the end of my line. On the end of my line is a stingray, about 1.5metres long (including tail). Not wanting to "do a Steve Irwin", I got it into the bank, and cut the line as close as I could to the mouth of the ray. I spent the rest of the afternoon worrying about how the poor thing was going to deal with a hook in its mouth for the rest of its life, but then I googled, and found that over time, rays and other fish actually remove hooks from their mouths as they grow. I felt much better after I read this.

This afternoon at Port Macquarie, we saw dolphins playing at the entrance of the harbour. They were a fair way away, but there would have been maybe 6 or 7 of them I'd say, lazily playing in the shallows near the bar. Dolphins are awesome.

More impressive (to me anyhow) is what happened this afternoon after seeing the dolphins. The water around these parts (and the whole central and north coast, from what I can work out) is beautifully clear - so much nicer than anything my native Moreton Bay has to offer. I stood on the rock wall as the tide was coming in through the channel - which incidentally is a VERY strong current, as it is the only entry point for the entire inlet and river systems that feed from here - and watched a group of about a dozen Manta Rays slowly swim out to sea, against the current. They were almost diamond shaped, with a tail probably the same length as the body (possibly longer), reasonably dark grey in colour, and when they flapped their "wings" you could see the underside was a brilliant white colour. I have never seen ANYTHING like that in the wild, and I'm guessing I'm pretty unlikely to see it again. Sadly Anna was chasing Grace at the time, so was unable to see it as well, but it was pretty amazing - certainly unexpected! At least I didn't hook one this time...

(Addendum : After a bit of research, these were almost certainly stingrays, not manta rays. What is it with me and stingrays lately? I really need to borrow a pocket-sized "what fish is that?" book!)

Port Macquarie

We have been in Port Macquarie since Tuesday - yet another pretty little township (actually this one's big enough to be a city) on the coast. Our caravan park is situated right on the breakwall at the mouth of the river, and you can walk right out to the end of the wall at high tide and feel the waves with all your body. If you keep walking round, you get to the Town Beach, which although rocky, seems to be a nice place for a swim.

If you go in the other direction (into the harbour) along the wall, within about 500m you are literally in the centre of town - it's certainly nice and close. What amazes me (probably a city dweller thing) is that a lot of municipal buildings (Police, Library, Centrelink) all have beautiful views overlooking the river. While this is nice, something in me screams out "what a waste" - but it does add character to the place! They have done a lot of work with the wharf and town square (pictured, wth Anna & Grace) and it's a very pleasant place to go for a stroll, pick up a feed, or to do some shopping.

Port Macquarie was a convict settlement early in the 1800s - the main part of which was actually right where our caravan park is. You can walk around and see remnants of old buildings, wells, grave stones and the like, situated on the hills surrounding the river. Many a ship has come to grief on the rocks at the entrance of the harbour as well - there seems to be information dotted about town on literally hundreds of shipwrecks in the area.

While the town is nice, the caravan park is decidedly ordinary - unclean amenities is a real annoyance, and the biggest issue for us is that none of their van sites have a concrete slab for our annexe. This means you have to lay your flooring down on dirt - or, since it had been raining for days when we arrived, a nice layer of mud. Oh but here's the kicker - some sites do have slabs - but they are on the side of the site you use for the CARAVAN. So while your caravan's tyres sit beautifully square and dry, you're forced to live in dirt and/or mud. Good thinking!! NOT.

Just left South West Rocks,...

Hi Guys,

Sorry I didn't blog much from South West Rocks. It was a busy week potty training! [sigh]

That said, we didn't just keep ourselves busy potty training, we did do a couple of other things during the week. We went on a lovely walk into Horseshoe Bay. We went to Church at The Shed AOG (where there was another Gracey and an Annabelle Grace for our Gracey to play with!). We did a drive around and checked out Trial Bay Gaol and the associated camping area. It's funny but there are a couple of caravan parks around South West Rocks that you need to book 12 months ahead to get a site. They are in absolutely sensational locations but still, it takes some serious planning to time your trip one year in advance.

There's a fantastic little cottage in the main street of South West Rocks that is up for sale. While it has development approval to be converted into a shop & 4 units, I think it is screaming out to be converted into a combo coffee shop and bookstore (or something eg. gift shop, deli, something else cool). The front yard could be easily converted into a dining area. Oh, I tell you, it just needs someone with a bit of vision and ingenuity to make that into something. It's smack bang in the centre of town.

To give you a bit of context, South West Rocks is a tiny little village that has recently been discovered by Seachangers. As such, it is growing at a mammoth rate. New estates completely surround the town and then continue on for miles along the Macleay River. It is strange to see, especially considering there is not a whole lot of industry in the town to support such a large population. Tourism would have to be its main industry, but some residents probably commute to Coffs Harbour, Kempsey or Port Macquarie as it is no more than an hour's drive to each of them. South West Rocks is like a rough diamond that people are only now discovering and hence heading there in droves.

I liked it, but I don't think I liked it enough to live there.

Sleep and Rain

Last night was one of those nights when you think "parenting's for chumps". Grace did not sleep well - despite going to bed very much later than normal (8.30pm) she tossed and turned and grizzled all night with teething, and then once the panadol took the pain away, she decided that 1.30am was her new wake-up time. It took us over 3 hours of reading stories, singing to her, and cuddling her to get her to sleep. This of course didn't alter her normal wake up time in the slightest!! Ah parenting. Gotta love it.

Today is our last full day at South West Rocks, and it's raining very solidly. The annex is nicely waterproof so it doesn't affect us all that much, but it does put a damper (sic) on things. It's great to see the rain, but we're hoping it abates a little so we can pack down the annex in the dry. Not looking likely at this stage but we'll see how we go I guess - can't change the weather.

Potty training for Grace is going well - still not perfect, but getting there. It's a really difficult process in the van - we're not sure it was such a great idea, but if we can pull it off successfully, it will make life a lot easier for all of us. Because we're travelling, it involves taking said potty with us wherever we go - if we go for a walk, the potty comes with us. This makes for some interesting sights for everybody else, and some of the most scenic toilet views you can imagine!

South West Rocks

We are currently staying at a place called South West Rocks, which is situated on NSW's mid north coast. It's a pretty little town, which sits on the coast at the entrance of the Macleay river. It amazed us just how BIG this place is - we initially thought it was a sleepy little township, but you can just keep driving and driving round the houses here. Most of them are quite new, which also surprised us a bit - quite a few new developments seem to have happened recently.

Just up the road is the Trial Bay Lighthouse, which sits on one of the most rocky shorelines you'll ever see - it's quite obvious why the lighthouse is there! To get to it you travel about 8 km up a windy road through the state forest - a beautiful drive. When I was driving up to the lighthouse the other night for a look, I had to stop quite suddenly because in the middle of the road was the biggest kangaroo I have EVER seen - it would have stood a good 7 or 8 feet tall when it sat up. I have never seen one that big, and didn't even know they GOT that big - so I was shocked to find it in my path while sweeping round a bend at 80k's. He sat there looking at me for a minute or so, then hopped on his merry way. I'm glad he didn't hop in my way while the car was moving - I think the car might have come off second best in an impact....

Talking of kangaroos, we saw about 40-50 of them all feeding together in one little paddock by the side of the local pub tonight. (The pub is situated on the river bank, maybe 500m away from houses). Neither of us have seen so many of them in one place at one time - even at wildlife parks and the like. We were most impressed.

This evening for dinner, we drove into town and had fish and chips while sitting overlooking the water at Horseshoe Bay. Horseshoe bay, perhaps unsurprisingly, is shaped like a horseshoe, and is bounded at either side by rocky outcrops, which reach into the little alcove. The bay is only tiny - maybe 100m in length - but its calm blue-green water almost calls out to you to swim in it (which is a big call coming from a noted non-beach-swimmer like me). The beach has beautiful white sand, and is just gorgeous. There is a tiny little council-run caravan park which overlooks the bay from up on the foreshore, and that's somewhere we HAVE to stay at some point in our caravan adventures - it's that good. Grace had a great time running around the foreshore chasing the seagulls and whatever else that moved - picture is attached.

Potty Training Day!!!

Pray for us. Wish us Godspeed. Grace started her potty training yesterday.

So far the wees on the floor are beating the wees in the potty by 4 to 3, but the score is close so I'm not fretting too much about that. One of the wees was right beside the potty and probably only happened because she didn't know how to pull her swimmer pants down,... so if you take that into account, the score is pretty even.

Scott just helped clean up from the mess of our first poo accident. To Grace's credit though, she came and grabbed me as soon as it happened ie. before she'd had a chance to smear it across the walls.

It surprised me how excited she was to have stickers as a reward. We blu-tacked a piece of pink wrapping paper on the wall so she can stick her stickers on it when she gets them. She is pretty impressed by that pink sheet of paper and loves to try and stick her stickers on. I was worried that it wouldn't be enough motivation for her, but it seems to be so far.

I'm sure we'll all remember South West Rocks because of Grace's potty training.

[sigh]

I know, I know,...

I know, I know,... I didn't blog once while I was at Emerald Beach. Quite frankly, folks, I was too busy having fun reacquainting myself with civilisation. Yes, I am addicted to shopping centres. I discovered this strange fact when, after enduring Kyogle and Illuka's significant lack of supermarkets, I went into a frenzy as soon as I arrived at Park Beach Plaza in Coffs Harbour. OMG They have Donut King! And they have Woolworths,... Oh, and Target. Awesome.

During our 10 days at Emerald Beach I ran a thousand errands, picked up things we needed, replaced the old rotten sheets that tore about two days after leaving Brisbane, used my Christmas Big W voucher to buy a brown corduroy satchel that is very cool. To coin an advertiser's phrase, "I'm lovin' it". The satchel, that is.

We had a lovely old time at Emerald Beach, frollicking on the jumping pillow, playing on the merry-go-round, splashing in the overly deep baby pool. They even let us use the Disabled bathroom so we could shower more comfortably with Grace. She's not a fan of those 'laundry sink' style baby baths.

Grace had a heck of a time with her teeth during our stay at Emerald Beach. She had about six teeth break through the gums all at once. Now she looks like she's got a real mouthful! She's only missing canines. I remember that they take a while to come through.

The people at the caravan park made a big fuss of the kids. One day Grace got to go for a ride on a tractor! Another day they put on a pancake breakfast. I asked for a pikelet-sized pancake for Grace and they gave her a blanket-sized one. These pancakes reminded me of the Naan bread they give you at Sitar Restaurant in New Farm. It's the size of a blankie. Serious Naan. Serious Pancakes. The problem with such large pancakes is that you need a bucket of maple syrup to keep up with such a large lump of buttery goodness.

Ah, but parting is such sweet sorrow. Emerald Beach is now a memory. We are staying now at the beautiful seaside alcove of South West Rocks. Stay tuned for our exciting adventures here.

Reflections on Emerald Beach/Coffs Harbour

Well we can't believe it's been over a week since we got here, but we are moving on tomorrow. We are off to South West Rocks, which looks like a beautiful spot. A reasonably short trip at 185km, which is pretty good in our books!

We really like Coffs Harbour, as mentioned previously. It really feels like somewhere you could live happily.

I had the pleasure on Saturday night of attending an RC car race meet here in Coffs. I hooked up with an old friend/associate from the Harris RC days, who runs the club from his motorbike wrecking shop on the industrial side of town. It was a small but excellent meeting - you could not hope to meet a nicer bunch of folks to race with. The track is awesome too - it kind of follows the space that he's got to play with, but it has plenty of great sections, including a brutal steep uphill left-right-left at the end of the main straight. Danny even loaned me a car, so I got to have a race too! The only problem was that it made me realise how much I miss RC racing while we're on the road. Still, was an excellent night.

I took a walk along the breakwater at Coffs today, across to Muttonbird Island. Unsurprisingly, this island is home to a massive colony of muttonbirds, which nest there between September and March. The island is quite high, and the views were simply amazing. On the western side you look over the marina and the rest of Coffs, on the southern side you have the entrance to the harbour and the southern breakwater (see picture), on the northern side you look up the beautiful local beaches towards where we're staying, and on the eastern side, you have a really steep drop down to a rocky shoreline, which looks out across the most amazingly dark blue bit of ocean you've ever seen. Beautiful.

The other cool thing that happened today was a Tractor Ride. The caravan park here puts them on for the kids once a week, so Grace (with mum in tow) got a nice ride behind the gardener's tractor. She seemed to enjoy it a lot!


We have spent most of this evening packing up the annex and the inside of the van, so we can have a reasonably easy time of things tomorrow morning before we leave. I'm still not 100% sure this is the easiest way of going about things, but it does have a couple of BIG advantages - firstly that all the big jobs can be done while Grace is asleep, and secondly that we don't have to get up at the crack of dawn in order to have everything done by the time we have to be out of whatever caravan park we're in (usually 10am-ish). It takes a surprising amount of time to pack down and get yourself and all your gear ready to move in a caravan - longer than you'd think.

Kangaroos

I forgot to mention - those kangaroos I mentioned in an earlier entry appear to be locals, or at least regular visitors - we have seen them at least once every day, lazily hopping round the park, eating a bit of grass, or having a sleep. I managed to get some pictures this time as well.

About 10 minutes ago, I was wandering back to the caravan, having just had a nice hot shower in the amenities block. I walked back to the van as I normally do, along the side of the road, absentmindedly thinking about life, the universe, and everything (as you do). All of a sudden, in the darkness ahead of me, this big THING materialises from the shadows, all of about 2 feet in front of me, and slightly to my left. My mind was decidedly elsewhere, and having something reasonably large appear so suddenly in front of me, to be frank, scared the absolute crap out of me. I made one of those cartoon-esque "Nnnnnggyyaahhhh" sounds as I jumped backwards instinctively, just in time to see one of the abovementioned kangaroos hop away towards its mate, who was similarly laying down in the darkness, about 10 feet further away. Talk about giving a guy a heart attack!

I'm not sure if they were laying in wait, just waiting for some mug (me) to come along so they could scare them, or if I was the one interrupting them. They're probably off with their mates right now, sitting round the campfire, swapping stories. "Did you see the look on that fat guy's face when you stood up Bazza? Classic...".

Jumping Pillows

If you're anything like me, when you see the words "jumping pillow" your first reaction is "what's all that about?". Well, I'm glad you asked. Our current van park has a permanent jumping pillow near the playground - imagine a massive thick vinyl sheet, pegged at the sides to make an airtight seal with the ground, and inflated to the point where it bulges up in the middle. You jump on it, and you bounce quite a long way in all kinds of directions. I'm not sure if that description does it justice, but you can rest assured it's a lot of fun.

When I was a kid, there were things like blow-up jumping castles when you went to the local carnival or show, but it was, at best, something you got to do once a year. The idea of going somewhere where there was a PERMANENT jumping toy would have been unthinkable! Luckily, this pillow is also ok for big kids like Anna and myself to have a bit of play on, so we get to be children again. Wahoo!

Both of the girls had a good jump around on it the other day - watching Gracey giggle with delight when she started bouncing helplessly was fantastic. Being a dad rocks.