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.