After leaving Palm Beach, we continued onto the Central Coast, going via West Head lookout point, for any avid Home and Away fans, this was the location for Belle and Adens wedding, this was a fact I didn't need to share with Iain who despite not watching these shows seems to somehow miraculously know it all the same:)

It really was spectacular and worth the detour, it overlooks Barrenjoey Head and as good as the photos are I don't think they do it justice.

We then drove onto the Central Coast and while our approach of booking campsites on the day of arrival has worked thus far, it became clear that this was a faux pas on a Friday night so close to Sydney as we found there was no room at the inn at the first two campsites we tried to book into. It was third time lucky though and we booked into the Blue Lagoon site at Bateau Bay. As we arrived fairly late in the day, we pitched the tent and headed out to the RSL club Iain had noticed on our drive through the town. Whilst I believed this was a lovely romantic gesture from Mr T wining and dining me on a Friday night, it became apparent that there was ulterior motive and surprisingly for one of us the first game of the rugby season was being shown live on every TV screen at the club:)

We stayed two nights at Bateau bay, the second day venturing into Gosford and visiting the tourist hotspot of Terrigal on the coast. There were some lovely beaches on the central coast with very affordable housing considering it's only an hour and twenty minute train ride to central Sydney but there is not much in Gosford and it seemed a bit run down. Terrigal was a very popular place on Saturday afternoon and reminded me a bit of an English seaside place. That afternoon, we returned to bateau bay to soak up the last couple of hours of sunlight.

The following morning we awoke to sweltering heat, ( in reality it was only about 27 but we've really noticed the fact that it's a different type of heat and the humidity the further north we go) and the plan was to move onto lake Macquarie, however it transpired Lake Macquarie wasn't that far and there wasn't much there so we pushed onto Newcastle. We were both interested to see what Newcastle was like and were both pleasantly surprised. Whilst the town is similar to Wollongong and Geelong, i.e. not far out of a major city and a working port, I definitely preferred Newcastle out of the three, it had a really nice beach - Nobbys beach and there has been quite a lot of development along the foreshore, lots of apartments and bars, however the cbd looked like it needed a similar facelift. Again we contemplated staying for a night however we had made really good time and Mr Google told us it was only another 50 minutes to Port Stephens so we decided to push on as we'd heard really good things about Port Stephens.

We ended up in the Halifax caravan park at Nelson bay, this was in a really good spot, close enough to walk into town, but also on the waters edge. I'd go back to Port Stephens for a holiday because there seemed like there was quite a bit to do, kayaking, day trips to Broughton island, myall lakes national park etc and there were some fabulous beaches, one in particular was Fingal Bay where you could walk across the spit, however I wouldn't stay at our campsite as it was a tad too animal friendly for me. On the spot opposite was Bruiser the Boxer, next door was Charlie the Chiwawa and last night just as we were about to sit down round our camping stove with our lamb soulvaki, Titan the Terrier appeared running amok around the campsite, to a dog lover, he ranged from over zealous to a nuisance, for somebody with animalphobia it was hell.

Thankfully this morning we packed up and drove onto port Macquarie and have bunkered down at the Sundowner park which is a bit of a contradiction in itself as it's been threatening thunderstorms most of today. Weather permitting tomorrow, we are going kayaking and on a sunset cruise on the lake.

Xxx