After leaving Sydney, we had a plan for maybe the next week, but also vaguely knew what the rest of our trip would look like, as we had a bus ticket all the way up to Cairns.

The generic trip up the coast would go from Sydney straight to Byron Bay and then onwards, and this is the journey that most of the backpackers on our 6.30am coach were taking. Yet, we’d decided to make a fair few stops throughout New South Wales on the way up, because 1) Who wants to make such a killer journey on a bus (longer than Melbourne to Sydney...!?) and mainly 2) We wanted to stop, enjoy the weather and see these small places in between Sydney and Byron.

So our first stop was Newcastle, which I’d included in the itinerary from a recommendation by an old work colleague. Luckily for us, it was the first stop post-Sydney and only took just under 3 hours (that’s a short journey in Australia!).

The weather was nice when we got there, pretty much the standard for the rest of the NSW portion of the trip, and we got to the cosy hostel pretty quickly. Interestingly, because of the way we booked the hostel (ah, saving money blah blah) David and I were in separate rooms for the first time (I think!?) on this trip! I was in a 4 bed girls dorm, and David was in a 4 bed male dorm room. Despite our separation (oh, so far away, up one flight of stairs), we reconvened for our short 1 day of sight seeing in Newcastle. Buzzing from our newly minted mountain hiking status, we set off on a long walk to the lighthouse, break wall and general sea front area. As I said, it was a beautiful, sun -shiny day, made all the better by a random, charity money raising, $2-a-beer pub that was set up along the sea front!

Imagine we hadn’t already spent weeks not working and relaxing, because this was the perfect relaxing day. We’d only chosen to spend one night in Newcastle, mainly because we’d arrived at 9am so had a whole day there, and we knew we had at least a week on the road before we stopped to find work, so we had yet another early morning ahead of us.

Before resigning to our separate rooms, however, we took a short walk on the ‘ANZAC’ walk, which is a lit up bridge used to commemorate those who have served Australia and NZ in the armed forces.

Pitch black, except for the lighting on the bridge, looking out onto the shiny opaque ocean, was the perfect way to spend our one short day in Newcastle.

Highlights: ANZAC walk, brilliant weather, $3 beer by the beach
Accomodation: YHA Newcastle Beach, cosy and chilled, even in our separate rooms!