Port Stephens

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Friday 13th, eek! But nothing untoward happened in our world.

The lovely bay of Port Stephens is totally charming. Its unofficial capital is Nelson Bay, which is also the ‘dolphin capital of Australia’, and there are several other little towns and pretty beaches dotted around.

We based ourselves around Shoal Bay and when we first arrived it was already pretty dark. So we parked up and got into the back of the van, wondering what our view in the morning would be like. It was lovely! We were up on a hill and woke up sunshine pouring through the leaves of the trees and glimpses of the sea sparkling below. Truly wonderful. For once it was very easy to live completely in the moment and not think about much else :-)

After brekkie, we headed down to serene Zenith Beach and then climbed up to the summit of Tomaree Head which lies at the northeastern tip of Tomaree National Park. The summit is the location of what used to be Fort Tomaree, erected during WWII to defend a potential landing place for enemy aircraft and ships who may have tried to attack the steelworks at Newcastle or the aerodrome at Williamstown. Two large gun emplacements still lie along the main track and there used to be a radar station too. Today it’s as peaceful a place as can be. “Tomaree” is a local Aboriginal word for ‘high mountain’ and the steep hike was certainly not for the faint hearted. The views from the top were incredible though and worth every step! We even saw a pod of dolphins go by. A curious thing, which neither of us had encountered before, was a whole lot of padlocks which people had engraved with their names and attached to the railings at the summit.

After our exercise for the day, we hit the ocean for a swim where I saw the most incredible thing: some fish jumped around in the water, closely followed by a penguin! It was totally surreal, especially as I was viewing it from in the water.

That afternoon, we headed to Nelson Bay for a walk around town and some chill-out time at the bar with the best views in town (over the marina). Shame the coffee let the place down…

The following day was a bit of an action day. It started with a dolphin watching cruise with a difference. Our cool boat had a bubbling (cold saltwater) spa as well as a boom net that you could climb into in order to be close to the dolphins as they swam by. We saw them pretty close up which was magical. After all the dolphin excitement (one of the little girls on the boat was so excited she was screaming and hyperventilating), it was time to try out the boat’s slide. It went straight off the back of the boat into the sea, and was a lot of fun!

We quickly had some lunch before our afternoon sandboarding adventure (in fact, the day made me so hungry that I was pretty much constantly eating). The landscape here is so strange: lovely beaches… pretty towns… then HUGE sand dunes in what looks like desert. There were groups of people horse riding and camel riding through the dunes – and then there were the mad people (ie us) who were driven out there in massive trucks. The truck ride itself was an adventure! Once at the dunes, we were given a board each and pretty much left to our own devices. It was heaps of fun and crazy hard work walking back up the dunes to give it another go. They really need to install a ski lift! I’m afraid I don’t have any ‘action’ photos of us as I wasn’t going to take my camera out there with me. Sand literally got everywhere, including between my teeth. Should’ve remembered to close my mouth, haha.

On our return to Shoal Bay, perfectly timed with high tide, we went out snorkeling for a little while. It was a bit too dark and cold to do it for too long, but we saw plenty of fish and Dean spotted an octopus.

By the way, I’ve noticed that not all blog entries show all photos embedded in the text. So that you don’t miss out on seeing all of the photos, you can click on one of them and then scroll through them all. That’s certainly a good idea for this blog entry as it has 15 photos :-)

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