Port Stephens

A few weeks ago the long weekend (and Australia has so few of those) provided us with the first chance to use my new license by renting a car and going for a drive. So on the Saturday I picked up a car from a rental place locally and we did a big car-sized shopping at the supermarket - what a revelation it was not having to worry how much we could fit into one bag, buying all those heavy items (read: mega packs of toilet roll) that we couldn't normally carry in our arms on the bus on train. On the Sunday morning we set off for Port Stephens, about a three hour drive north of Sydney. Everything went really smoothly and the traffic wasn't too bad; the scenery is pretty nice as you travel on motorway cut through the hills and over the forrests of Ku Ring Gai national park. Then things went a little awry when, after picking up a tourist brochure at a rest stop we decided to take a scenic detour. Unfortunately we didn't realise that we were much further north than we thought we were on the map, and instead of travelling this road from south to north we went north to south (seeing all the sights), only eventually noticing we were going in the wrong direction when we started to see signs showing the number of km's to Sydney. We got to Newcastle a couple of hours late on a deserted Sunday afternoon with barely a shop open and the city not exactly advertising itself to tourists. After a late lunch we drove the rest of the way and soon reached open country side and christian rock radio stations. Arrived at Port Stephens in late afternoon, too late to actually find somewhere nice to stay thanks to the Country music festival that was on. The cashier at the restaurant later pointed a finger at her head like a pistol as she told us this was the reason why everywhere was full up for dinner. The next day we got to see huge sand dunes, huge pelicans and drove through Myall Lakes national park in a tiny car, over what turned out to be 20km drive through loose gravel with no way back, a "road" meant only for huge 4x4 "ute's". Ended up driving at about 5km/h and by the time we got back onto a normal road I was panicking that all the paint from the side of the car would be gone from a million pebble strikes. So lucky the rental place didn't notice any marks!