A Warm Welcome Home to Sydney!

I always know I am home when I am greeted at Sydney Airport by the bluest of blue skies, and in all my travels I have still not seen that shade of blue anywhere else. And Ben got bonus points for booking us into a very smart hotel practically on the white sand at Coogee Beach. And what a spot – this is Aussie outdoor culture at it’s best!  A full English in the café next door before spending a few hours swimming in the rock-pool baths watching the waves crashing over the sea wall under a hot sunny sky. The day got even better when we got a surprise phone call from my Mum & Dad who had driven down from Queensland to meet us in Sydney. (I think they were desperate to see the boys!).

We had a lovely family reunion in Sydney with my parents, it was fantastic to finally see them and spend the day together wandering around the harbour and then catching the ferry over to Manly. This is an iconic trip as it shows off the Sydney skyline at it’s best, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge flaunting their stuff, but it also weaves its way past some of the most beautiful bays in the world. I really had forgotten how gorgeous Sydney Harbour is.

As planned we also had the day at Coogee Beach, with our travelling friends the Dishmans, getting the full day at an Aussie beach experience; being dunked by rogue waves, pulling anemone spines out of unsuspecting feet, getting stung by blue-bottles, and of course finding sand in your unmentionables. Sadly, this is probably our last crossover with the Dishmans on this trip as they head off the Asia in a few weeks while we start catching up with our Aussie family and friends for a couple of months

Our next goal was to buy a car. Our friend Paul had been all over Sydney before our arrival searching out the perfect family car to transport us around Australia (hire car costs being prohibitive) and finally we found the newest member of our travelling group, a silver Ford Territory.

Then it was into full family & friends catch-up mode, lunches and dinner with my Aunties Marianne and Pauline, Uncle Roger and my cousin Claudia and her gorgeous family (including snake!), and Annthea a schoolfriend. We also spent a week staying with my longest (not oldest!) friends the Montgomerys, and their boys who became instant best mates with ours bonding over a mutual appreciation of Lego and Minecraft, and scary waterslides when we spent the afternoon at Wet’n’ Wild in Sydney – awesome fun. A lesson in ten-pin bowling and a day at the gorgeous Colo River, lazily floating in the stream, eating a sausage sizzle and trying to keep the goanna’s off our grub was a great way to end our time in Sydney. A massive thank you to the Brown family for lending us their fantastic Sydney home too, what a treat to have some normal family time again, thank you, thank you!! And the other Brown family treated us to a great BBQ lunch before we headed off north.

Fingal Spit in background

From Sydney we drove up to Nelson Bay about 3 hours north , staying at the Halifax Holiday Park situated on a peninsula with Little Beach (great for swimming) on one side and Shoal Bay (great for fishing) on the other. Perfect. We also walked up to the lookout at Tomaree National Park, overlooking Fingal Spit, a very hot and sweaty climb but worth the outstanding views of the coastline. Here we caught out first whiting too (thanks for the rigging advice Sean) but it looked so sad in the bucket that the boys got Ben to take it back to the sea to swim another day –  a very lucky fish!

Nelson Bay

From here it was another 400kms to Coffs Harbour and another 2 night stay in the Darlington Beach Holiday Park, again beautifully situated cabins around a lagoon, excellent swimming pools with slides and a great café. We sat on our balcony one morning watching a frill-necked lizard chasing the Ibis birds, and the next we had 3 kangaroos grazing on the grass. Ollie was in wildlife heaven, especially when a baby joey popped it’s head out of the pouch to say g’day. Then another 300km+ journey to Brisbane – this is when you really get a feel for the sheer scale of Australia.

Had my first photo taken here when I was 8!

A word about Wifi – it’s not that easy to get here, the holiday parks have limited provision (if any) and never enough Mbs to blog. Not really sure why Australia seem so far behind in this? So our posts may be more sporadic for a while!