A-M heads off to meet RBS honchos (head of Australia etc) in a morning of power networking. Dave heads off for the 5th and final haircut of the trip and some last minute shopping.The 10 minute train journey from central Sydney to the airport costs more than the 2.5 hour train from Sydney to Newcastle! Some things are the same the whole world over....Our Virgin Atlantic service has films on demand and it is sobering to watch Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Trut...

Check out and head to the beach for the morning. Waves not as radical as the previous day, disappointing. Hotfoot it back to the YHA, quick dip in pool to freshen up then pick up bags and catch bus back to Newcastle. Chinese ships seem to be loading up with coal - interesting to have seen both ends of this carbon process, with the infinite amount of Dong Fen trucks loaded with coal that we saw around China (probably different coal, but defo some of the aussie stu...

Spent the morning sandboarding on part of the 35km dunes which start nearby and run all the way most of the way down (40km +) to Newcastle. Disappointing compared to the crazy stunts we pulled in Fowlers Bay on our Nullabor trip. Looked for some local fish in Anna Bay. However the fish was from: Thailand, Phillipines, South Africa, Argentina, India and Taiwan. No Australian fish. We leave fishless in protest at the fish miles that have been accumulated in ai...

Dolphin watching cruise in the morning. Lots of dolphons in the harbour, eating their dolphin breakfasts. A-M sits in the boom net at the front of the boat as dolphins swim inches underneath. Many unsuccessful attempts at photos to capture said dolphins for posterity. Head for the beach in the afternoon. We are offered a lift by Bill & Aira from our YHA (we've just met them). Discover that they are heading for the nudist beach. A free lift is a free lift,...

Lots of Australian women think that wearing oversized sunglasses that look like they were nicked from their grannies is cool. Why?Caught bus to Shoal Bay then walked round the coast to Fingal Bay. Judged that the tide was low enough (waist high) for us to walk across the spit to reach the Port Stephens lighthouse; had the island to ourselves for a a while as most people we passed on the way back must have waited for the tide to get a bit lower (and heeded teh war...