Advertisement
Published: March 9th 2017
Edit Blog Post
DSC_0006
Van site at Old Bar Thursday 2 March, we headed up the Pacific Highway towards Old Bar beach when we saw a scenic turn-off route to get to Old Bar beach. Tracey and her husband, Darcy, had mentioned there was a back road to get to Old Bar, but it wasn't really suitable for caravans as it was quite hilly and winding. After 5 minutes on this scenic route we realised we had taken this very road. It was okay, compared to some country roads we had travelled on so far and the countryside and small beach towns made it worthwhile. Forster and Tuncurry are quite large towns and we were looking forward to seeing Old Bar as it is a small beach town. We arrived in the afternoon and the caravan park was near the beach with only sand dunes to walk over to get to the beach. After settling in, we took a short walk on the beach and once again, we had found a great beach.
Friday morning we took a long walk on the beach, which is very popular in the morning with the local people walking their dogs. Our dog Jayme is quite timid, so when she got bowled over
IMG_0252
Morning at Old Bar beach by a larger dog, she was not impressed. Later in the day we drove around Old Bar to get a sense of the size of the place. Very easy going pace. Saturday was just another wonderful day on the beach and relaxing during the afternoon. The beach gets crowded on the weekends. We could understand why people living in places like Newcastle are happy to drive to Old Bar on weekends and enjoy what the beach offers.
Sunday 5 March we said goodbye to Old Bar and headed towards Mylestom. Another small beach and riverside village. However, we only stayed one night. Not long after arriving, and negotiating a very tight reverse into a small caravan site, the weather turned. By late afternoon it had begun to rain with a bit of thunder and lightning. By evening it was raining quite heavily and our site began to flood. It is said that most events happen in 3's. The second event was our TV went kaput as I was re-tuning it (we found out later when the screen goes black, the TV is done for}. The third event was our gas bottle ran out just as Holly was completing dinner.
IMG_0254
Surfer getting ready at Old Bar beach We couldn't transfer the full gas bottle due to the fairly heavy rain falling. We put our external Kooler (portable frig/freezer) in the back of the car as the water on the site began to pool. Unbeknown to me, at 2.30 in the morning, Holly got up and reconnected the Kooler. By then the water had subsided. Monday morning, we were happy to head off.
We stopped off at Coffs Harbour, (which is a very pretty town as it has well established, large trees through the main roads) and bought a new TV (fortunately there was a TV sale on at the Good Guys). On to Grafton via the Pacific Highway. This wasn't a long trip from Old Bar and we arrived at Grafton by 12 noon. When you drive into Grafton, from the south, you cross the Grafton bridge which is over the Clarence River (largest river on the eastern seaboard - 400km long). It is a very old bridge, narrow, with 2 very tight corners at the beginning and end. You have to drive very slow as trucks go over the centre line due to the bridge width being so narrow. Can be a bit daunting. There
DSC_0001
Van site at Grafton is a project to upgrade the bridge with a completion date of 2019. Not too sure what the upgrade entails.
Wow, what a caravan park. Good size caravan sites, quiet, modern amenities, all for only $25. While we were in Newcastle, we bought an antenna for the TV as receiving TV signals by the satellite dish for the few days previously was increasingly difficult and to the point no TV signals could be received. The area around Grafton is quite hilly and when tuning the TV with the new antenna, it became obvious we needed an amplifier (booster) to get reception (a fellow caravanner connected his amplifier to our TV and only then could we get TV channels). I tried to find a place late Monday afternoon, but had no luck.
Tuesday morning, we agreed to stay 2 more nights (with or without TV reception) as the caravan park is so quiet and well maintained, and the town of Grafton has impressed us. There is a very liveable vibe about the town with rural acreage very close to the main part of town. We headed into the main centre and bought the equipment we needed. The reception was
DSC_0004
Part of the grounds at Grafton okay, but it could be hit and miss when the breeze got up. We also stopped at Bunnings to try and find some supplies we needed. Couldn't get the supplies, but we were fortunate that 5 small nails fell out of a packet of 2400 nails, which was exactly the amount of nails we needed to fix a shelf side in one of the kitchen cupboards. Lucky. :-)
Wednesday was a quiet day and on Thursday we packed up and headed north. Our aim was to stay at Tweed Heads. Let's see where we ended up in the next blog.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.112s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0669s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb