Blog Day 182 Fri 4th November 2011

The main attraction of Stanwell Park is the hand gliding and paragliding that can be done here. We aren't doing that however for 2 very good reasons. 1 we can afford it and 2 even if we could neither of us fancy slipping into a sleeping bag that's attached to an extra-large kite, and throwing ourselves off the side of a very large hill. Not matter how good the view is!

We do however make our way up to Bald Hill (the very large hill) a watch a few nutters taking off. The view from here is great but the place is packed with Japanese tourists and a group of school kids, not exactly the ideal place to whip out our kitchen. We did come across a little park area yesterday that had a few BBQs in it so we head down there to knock up a bit of breakfast. When we get down there though none of the BBQs are in any fit state to cook on, and there are a couple of women working their way through some pretty intense exercise programmes only a few meters from the cooking areas. They might not have been too happy with us rustling up our egg and bacon sarnies either, so we head back to the original spot where we had spent the night and before anyone can say a word the kitchen is out and we are cooking up a storm!

Dan's mate Dan is making his way down to Stanwell Park (fancies himself as a bit of a sleeping bag/kite flying nutter)so we hang about in the van until we hear from him. About an hour goes by and Dan phones telling us that he is about 10 minutes further on at a place called Coledale Beach. Turns out he also fancies himself as a bit of a surfer. When we arrive we park up behind Dan's monster of a campervan just in time to watch him being helped back to dry land by one of the lifeguards! He's a bit rusty on the old surf board and found himself caught in a pretty strong rip (he was adamant though that the lifeguard looked bored and he was just giving the guy something to do!)

It nice to see a familiar face after 6 months of travelling and we spend most of the day chilling out under the baking hot sun at the beach. Once we are all cooked and have stopped laughing at Dan's miserable attempts to get the surfboard out past the first break of waves (he did try bless him but after getting clouted on the back of the head, on more than one occasion, he finally admitted defeat), we make our way to Bi Lo to pick up some meat to throw on the Barbie! Dan's van has come equipped with one of those!

We head to another quiet car park next to another beautiful beach and fire the old girl up! Dan's brother Darren cooks the meat, Dan is on salad duty and our Dan cooks up far too much Pilau rice. The food goes down great along with too many Coronas and ¾ of a bottle of rum. We all pass out in our vans at god only knows what time.

Blog Day 183 Sat 5th November 2011

Dan, our Dan, woke up at about 6am this morning with a mouth like Ghandi's flip flop and a head that was about ready to explode. The short trip down to the toilets to brush his teeth was rewarded by one of Mother Nature's many crowning moments. The sun rising up out of the Pacific Ocean. Trish was still asleep so she missed out, and the awe inspiring sight didn't stop Dan from going back to the camper and passing out for another couple of hours.

We were woken at about half 8 with the other Dan knocking at the window to tell us that he was making his way back down the beach again. We weren't too far behind and what followed was the laziest day possible.

At around 3ish we had all had enough of the sun and decided to make our way up the road to a place called Kelly Falls. Here we did a little bit of bush walking around the top of the falls, where we spotted a pretty cool looking lizard, the arse end of a snake as it disappeared into the bushes (according to other Dan's brother anyway), and those elusive but very cool yellow backed tree frogs (which are only found in this area of Australia………….. apparently). After a bit more BBQing, we all seem pretty beat from the day's sun intake, which meant that none of us were too late to bed.