Tomorrow we are setting off from the small town of Port Macquarie after a couple of testing days at The Entrance, a couple of relaxing nights in Lake Macquarie, a brief stop in Newcastle and a couple more nights in this beach town.

After our first night at The Entrance looking out across the lake with pizza in hand we set out early the following morning to explore the surrounding beachside towns to see what was on offer from this part of the coast. We spent most of the day on Monday driving around from one town to another along winding coastal roads that gave us some nice views out over the water, but as the rain had set in we didn't venture outside too much. As the weather was due to remain the same for the next week or so we decided to spend just a couple of nights in each place we stopped at until we found somewhere warm and dry, so we planned to leave for Lake Macquarie the next day. After waking up and packing up the tent and preparing ourselves for our onward journey we were all ready to go. Unfortunately however, Bruce had grown quite attached to this little spot and refused to move from his vantage point overlooking the water.

One phone call and six hours later waiting for the mechanic to arrive and it was clear that we would be spending another night here, so back up went the tent while an oiled up man poked about at the engine with the occasional 'hmmm' and the odd 'I see'. After some time we were told that the distributor was broken and the mechanic would have to come back the next day to replace it, so all we could do was wait. And wait we did. Until almost three o'clock the following day when he came back and started to put back together the engine that he had dismantled the day before. This actually seemed a lot easier to him than taking it apart had and once the problem had been fixed and we had checked for any 'spare' engine parts lying around the floor, we crossed his greasy palm with gold and were finally on our way towards Lake Macquarie.

We checked out a couple of campsites but they didn't seem to meet our rigorous high standards (it's actually pretty surprising just how much variation there is between camping grounds, when all we ever really look for is somewhere that's clean) until we found a nice spot overlooking the water of Lake Macquarie itself, late Wednesday afternoon. The rain had eased off a little during the day, so that evening we sat out underneath the awning, watching the sun fading away over the lake while we ate, while getting acquainted with the local pelican, Bill, who comes searching for his dinner each night from the leftovers of our neighbours in the tent next door.

The next day we set out in the car once again as we wanted to explore the national park around the other side of the lake. However, after some ridiculously steep dirt tracks and mud roads had been navigated we arrived at the top of the national park track to find that there had been very recent controlled bush fires and the walkways were closed off. How people manage to control bush fires is beyond us! I mean, imagine the scenario - council leaders and conservationists all sitting around a table discussing the best way to combat bush fires and somebody comes up with the ingenious suggestion of starting fires deliberately! And if that wasn't bizarre enough, everyone else there then agrees to it and away they go! Anyway, we did get to see one mad family abseiling down the side of the cliff, but other than that highlight, it was straight back down along the same hazardous road that we had come up, onto the lake circuit road and eventually back to the campsite.

We left Lake Macquarie on Friday morning with the intention of driving as far as was necessary to reach some agreeable weather. We stopped off briefly in Newcastle as we had heard that it was quite a nice place with lots to offer. In all reality it is no bigger than St. Ives or Portadown, with even less to do there, but we did at least manage to pick up a couple of books as we knew that it wouldn't be too long before we were in national parks again, and the weather still showed no sign of easing off.

Once we arrived in Port Macquarie we found a great little campsite fairly close to everything, and set up our humble abode before heading out for a look at the beaches. The weather was, naturally, appalling but this did mean that there were some huge waves coming in and we spotted a few dots in the water that turned out to be people desperately struggling against the wind and rain to stand up on their surfboards. There are several beaches all within easy walking distance from the town centre and the sun has come out today for the first time in about a week, so there are now hundreds of people crammed onto the sand. Tomorrow we are heading a little further along the coastline to Limeburners Creek Nature Reserve in Point Plomer, where we are planning to spend a few days relaxing on the beach and getting back to nature in the world of un-powered tent sites and cold showers!

During our time travelling around from town to town over the last few months we have become increasingly aware that all of the towns along the East coast appear to be exactly the same, as if designed in a great warehouse by one person and then placed every hundred kilometres or so along the road.

Port Macquarie does have some great beaches, but other than that there is nothing here to make it stand out from any number of other towns that we have been to along the way. Maybe it is to be expected, as they are all along the main tourist trail that hundreds of thousands of backpackers travel along every year, and as a result every one of them has a Starbucks, a Subway and a Global Gossip Internet cafe's well as many other faceless shops and services. We have stopped at many of these places and indeed used some of the services available (more Subways than we'd care to remember) and at times they are a welcome reminder of normality, but it seems a shame that so many of them have been transformed from their natural states into little more than a tourist trap.

Maybe we are biased because we had friends at Nambucca Heads who were kind enough to take us in and show us some of the hidden treasures of the town, but there was a really relaxed vibe to the place and many of the national parks that we have been to offer sharp, contrasting beauty that simply can't be seen along the coast. But then, if everybody started discovering these little places, then they too would become overrun and turn into nothing more than 'just another town' along the East coast, so we shouldn't be too critical because it is probably these places that make us appreciate the hidden gems even more.