Mudgee, Newcastle, Old Bar

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Friday 24 February we said goodbye to Bathurst and drove on to Mudgee. We again took the country roads, passing through small towns such as Sofala, Wattle Flat, Ilford and Apple Tree Flat, that consisted of usually 1 old church and half a dozen houses or sometimes just 1 or 2 homes. Being near the Great Dividing Range the roads are quite windy. Arrived in Mudgee mid afternoon. A comfortable day's travel is driving no more that than 4 hours as it takes us about an hour to set up and another hour to make sure everything is unpacked and then ready for a beer.

The caravan site was on quite a slope, but an essential piece of equipment are the chocks to secure the tyres and level the caravan. Saturday we drove around Mudgee to get a sense of the town. It has a population of about 10,000 people. A lot of the old fibro and weatherboard houses seemed to be on one side of the railway tracks that pass through the town. The old part of town is quite small. Mudgee hasn't the historic buildings that Bathurst, Moss Vale and surrounding areas have.

Sunday we decided to move on, with the plan to stay at Denman, on the way to Newcastle. 30km north of Mudgee is the historic town of Gulgong. The old buildings of the 19th century have been retained with businesses still operating from them. It was a very quiet town and not much to interest us. Travelled on a country road passing through Ulan, Turill and Uarbry where the country road turned into the Golden Highway. South of Turill there was evidence of a large fire that had gone through the area and continued for about 10km on both sides of the road and as far as we could see, until after the turn-off onto the Golden Highway. The photo of the rest area, Callis Park, shows the devastation. The fire had gone through 2 weeks ago when NSW had very hot temperatures, with one town completely erased. The devastation was sad to see.

It was around lunchtime when we got to Denman and decided to continue on. We checked out the Maitland van park which only had 5-6 caravan sites for visitors (the rest being permanents) and we couldn't find anybody to ask abour the park so we agreed to continue. We stopped at Heatherbrae which is just outside of Newcastle, along the Pacific Highway. On Monday, it became obvious that the area was rife with mosquitoes and as we could only stay for a maximum of 2 nights, we checked out another caravan park a little up the road and booked ourselves in for the following 2 nights. We had been having trouble getting a signal from our satellite dish so on Monday we bought an antenna for the TV. Yes, TV reception again.

Tuesday morning we moved to the other caravan park, located at Raymond Terrance and then we visited the area of Port Stephens. Of the number of beaches, there were only 3 that were dog friendly. Stockton Beach was a long beach with dunes devoid of grass and this gave a perception of the beach going back into the bush. Port Stephens caters very much for the tourists and as the caravan parks didn't cater for dogs, it was just a visit. The drive into Port Stephens is very picturesque. We took the long way back to where we were staying, accidentally, and nearly ended up in the industrial area of Newcastle. We just turned around and looked for the signs that would lead us back to where we were staying.

Our reason for staying at Newcastle was to catch up with family on Mum's side. We arranged to meet them on Wednesday. Mum's sister, Mickey was in hospital due to a bad case of viral pneumonia, but we were able to catch up with her. Peter (uncle) then drove us to my cousin's place (Tracey) for lunch. It had been 9 years since we last caught up and it was a great time.

The mozzies were just as bad at the caravan park at Raymond Terrace and although it was spacious, we weren't going to extend our stay. So, on Thursday we left Newcastle and headed to Old Bar beach, as suggested by Tracey.

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Photos

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Devastation of the fire

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Stockton Beach

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Camel rides at Stockton Beach

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Another dog friendly beach at Port Stephens

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our site at Raymond Terrace

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Extent of the fires

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This was at the beginning of the fire damage