Dolphins and Sand-Boarding!

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After our New Years celebrations, Carina and I finally made our way to Nelson Bay (where we had entended on taking a day trip a couple of times before). Many locals had recommended Nelson Bay to us, including Jamie, who had spent all his summers here at a caravan park with his grandparents. However, in the past few years, the area has become a huge tourist hub. Luckily for me, being a tourist hub isn't always a problem, and it meant that there were lots of activities to chose from. On the first day though, Carina and I were exhausted due to a definite lack of sleep, so we crashed early (after finding a campground near One Mile Beach).
The next day we took the bus back to Nelson Bay and found a Dolphin Tour that started at 10:30AM. The cruise took us around the harbour, and we saw lots of dolphins in the wild! I'd never seen any in the wild before, and so I ended up snapping loads of pictures, and being extremely excited! The tour also included a swim in the sea - the boat had a slide and diving board in the back, so all of us enjoyed a swim (although it was a cloudy day, and so there wasn't the sun that would typically be around to dry us!).
The rest of the day Carina and I walked around the town until 3:50, when Carina had to make her way back to Newcastle, and I went back to the campground. The next day, I went on a 4WD tour around the sanddunes on Stockton Beach. The beach is the largest moving beach in the Southern Hemisphere (it's claim to fame) and it spans from Newcastle all the way to Anna's Bay. The tour that I took drove us around the sand dunes and allowed us to go sandboarding off the top of one of the larger ones! The sandboarding was so much fun I kept sliding down, running up, sliding down, running up - to the extent that the tour guide was laughing at me! The tour also showed us some shell animals that are related to muscles that dig their way into the sand by means a large tongue-like muscle.
The best part of the tour was a small girl who sat at the back of the bus, and loved it each time the bus would lunge in any direction. She would laugh and laugh, making the whole bus start laughing with her.

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Photos

Nelson's Bay
Koala in the tree next to my tent

Nelson's Bay
Dolphin in the water

Nelson's Bay
Spider on my TENT!!