Went slightly back on ourselves and along Waterfall Way to go to a small place called Bellingen for a few hours. This looks like old skool Oz, really charming place which seems to be full of knit-your-own-yoghurt people. Every cafe is organic, there are antique shops, a mystical shop full of dream catchers and rune stones, a horse and carriage ride you can take, a gorgeous mosaic outside a mosaic centre(?!) and cafe bars that have live music every nihgt. It...

Decided to set pff for somewhere else as there doesn't seem to be much to do in Port McQuarie. But first we needed to do some laundry - we've had it done in guesthouses and hostels up to now - it was quite fun doing it in the launderette! Drove about 120km to a rest area for the night. It was right near the Pacific Highway with quite a few other campers there. Sat outside with table and chairs and food and wine. So many trucks were passing, it was pre...

Drove up to Port McQuarie this morning. Port is a small town with a palm tree lined main street and hundreds of apartments overlooking the sea. Quite a lot of new homes being built too - as we've seen in many places since Sydney. Its a pleasant place; very tidy but quite plain really. Wouldn't really say its a foriegn tourist place particularly - apparantly it attracts Sydney weekenders and Oz tourists though.

Thought we'd spend the day at the beach today. We drove back down to Seal Rocks, so called because in the summer Australian fur seals come here. We went to another beach on the other side of Sugarloaf Point lighthouse (lovely name!). This was empty apart from a surf class just about to start. So we sat and watched them. The sand looked like golden creamy fudge and was really fine. We built a sandcastle, quite ambitiously styled on Angkor Wat... A...

We left Newcastle to drive up the Pacific Highway to Seal Rocks this morning. A couple of hundred km later we came off the highway at a tiny town called Buladelah, which just had a bottle shop (of course), an Iga supermarket, library and some houses. Real 'Neighbours' style houses too! Got some petrol and checked the oil, after not being able to find the dipstick and having to ask for help. (The guy in the shop announced, "This gentleman can't find his dipstick",...