Blogs from Port Stephens, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania

Over night in Port Stevens – the Butlins of Australia I had a really shitty sleep because I had no roll mat so it was like sleeping on the ground which was not pleasant – ah well it's better than a kick in the balls. Decided to get up early for the sunrise which was quite magical, the only thing that interrupted my serenity was that I was being feasted on by a couple of mozzies; “Dirty feckers.” I can't stress how much I hate them. I thought it would be a good idea to escape to the water to get away from them; it worked to a degree. After about 30 min of having a cat fight with the mozzies I went back to camp to pack up and wake Louis up so we could ... read more

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 ... read more

We arrived in Port Stephens on Monday and we are here for the week. We are staying at Shoal Bay, just east of the main hub of Port Stephens. We are in a nice caravan park, its pretty busy, especially over the weekend as everyone comes here from Newcastle. The park has rabbits running around the place, they don't seem to be worried about us at all, the little guy in the photo ran under the caravan and sat underneath the car while I was talking on the phone. Stockton Beach was a must do for us while here, we accessed the beach from Anna Bay and drove south towards Newcastle. The Syra wreck is at the newcastle end of the beach and it close to shore. The sand was very soft the closer we go ... read more

Well followers, what an interesting weekend! We were initialling heading off on the Friday, but just got too hard with the loss of an Aunty and reorgainising work for the Funeral and then we then reorganised the following week and left 6.30am Saturday 19th March 2011 and came back home on the Monday morning. The moth and I were to meet Jen & Mick for breakfast at Shoal Bay and then book into the Caravan Park. The Harveys, Megan & Chloe, Chris & Kim and Shauna & Scotty were to arrive later. I knew from the moment we arrived and called to see how far away Jen and Mick were that it would be an interesting weekend. They hadn't yet left so we thought we would go and see if we could put our van on ... read more