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.