The Camper Van Adventures..

Chapter 2.. Neil Diamond ruined my life

Day two in the van had echoes of day one... Unable to find the campsite, got on the motorway in the wrong direction etc... But in comparison it was a great success. We found ourselves pitching up and camping out for the first time in a place called 'The Entrance' just north of Sydney.

We'd spent the day driving around the Blue Mountains National Park and seeing some of its famous sites before heading back to the Pacific Highway, which runs between Sydney and Brisbane. It was a doddle and we didn't get lost once- who needs a TomTom, map reading is easy as pie !.. Until it lies to you...

And by lies I mean it tells you there is a campsite, which you drive to down a very steep and windy mountain road only to find there is no campsite after all! (We will be writing to the map author.. Along with our letter to Boris Johnson about our umbrella initiative idea.. But that's a whole other story..)

We found our way though to the next option and made ourselves right at home. Things were back on track, working out a clear route and plan is clearly the way forward so Thursday night over dinner at The Entrance we sorted out Saturday and Sunday's plan..only for Neil Diamond to come along and s*** all over it..!! What are the chances!

The idea was to head to Newcastle Friday morning- the place where all the worst criminals were sent when Australia started..(Yes, I was bored enough to read the history section of the Lonely Planet) but now its a jolly little seaside town. We planned to take a look around and then set up camp for two nights in Hunter Valley- Australia's most famous wine region- where we would visit a winery and do wine tasting..

Arriving in the Hunter Valley we found, one again, that our map lies about campsites existing and also when we did locate one, every single bloody campsite in the whole bloody region was booked up for the whole weekend because sodding Neil Diamond was doing a concert there on Saturday night. Luckily they had space for us for the Friday night though so instead of a sophisticated trip to a famous winery to sample lovely wine, our trip to Hunter Valley ended up consisting of us drinking wine from a box in plastic cups while having to listen to some rather drunk middle aged folk sing Neil Diamond tunes.. !! Sweet Caroline my arse.. Annoying Caroline more like !!

As well as the Neil Diamond drama there was another heartbreaking moment in Hunter Valley as Lodge realised she'd lost her favourite bra.. Really, she should be much more careful where she leaves her underwear..haha, we think it excitement of the last night in the hostel in Sydney it got left behind.. And so the first port of call when we got to Port Stephens, our next stop, was to find her a new bra. Thankfully this was much more successful than my attempt to buy a bra in Bali where the sales woman actually laughed in my face when I asked if they had anything bigger than the minuscule bras on show.. It seemed Indonesia does not cater for the larger chest !

In Port Stephens we stayed in a place called Nelson Bay on One Mile Beach. We were there for the weekend (because of Neil 'ruin our plans' Diamond) and ended up having one of our best days there (thanks Neil). On the Sunday we booked to do a dolphin cruise and sandboarding. The Dolphin cruise was AMAZING, we saw so many dolphins just swimming about in the ocean, so close to us. We've both seen/swam with dolphins before but seeing them in the wild, doing jumps and little tricks without being bribed by stinky fish bearing trainers was incredible. The best bit was seeing them surfing (no, not with boards) in groups of about ten in the waves, just meters from our boat, which itself was brilliant. It was massive, had an on board jacuzzi and slide and there were just ten of us on board as opposed to hundreds that were crammed onto other boats. We both had a go on the very steep slide (me with much persuasion!) And had a ride in the boom net- a net you sit in in the water while the boat is moving along. It was our first dip in Australian waters and we did check first to see what the likelihood of shark attack was. The lady reassured is that although they'd seen a shark in the last week, there was nothing to worry about as we'd stopped in shallow waters (which sharks don't like) and the captain had put a small transmitter into the water which let's off a noise at a frequency sharks won't come near.. Or so he told us, they could've lowered in a portable radio playing Michael Macdonald music for all we know.. But we dived in regardless !!
(Michael Mcdonald has annoyed me almost as much as Neil Diamond recently.. Lodge has his album on her iPod (thank you for that Matthew!) and shuffle seems to put on his songs very frequently.. Sometimes I want to crash the car just so he shuts up..)

Anyway back to our day of fun and the afternoon's activity was sandboarding. We were driven in a massive 4x4 across the sand dunes, given a tray like implement and began sliding down huge hills.. It was sooo much fun, despite having to trek it back to the top each time bringing back memories of climbing up to our mountain top shed in Phi Phi !! Things became even funnier when a coach load of Chinese tourists arrived, all dressed in fluorescent clothing, visors, sock and some in gloves (its 30 degrees and you're in the desert for gods sake!). They were so bloody funny to watch, for some reason they all adopted a position sort of like they were giving birth and had their hands in the sand the entire way down so they went incredibly slowly. Obviously there was someone at the bottom capturing it all on camera..taking more pictures than anyone would ever wish to look at ! Bless 'em !

We left when the second coach load turned up.. That would've been far to much hilarity for us to take. We'd had our fill of fun, fallen off, rolled over, unintentionally gone down backwards and were absolutely covered in sand from head to toe!

After the days excitement we stayed in for the evening and played cards in the van over a glass of wine. Actually, we did this about 5 nights in a row..we are very quickly turning into my Grandma !!
From Port Stephens we headed to Byron Bay, stopping off for a night each in Port Macquerie and Coffs Harbour, both of which were cute little seaside towns. In Port Macquerie we visited a Koala hospital. Some of the stories were so sad but mostly had happy endings and seeing pictures of the koalas that's been injured, for example in bush fires, it seemed like a miracle they'd survived. While in Coffs Harbour we spent the day at the beach and by the campsite pool before another thrilling night of Uno..how rock and roll !!

Next stop Byron Bay, where we plan to stay for three nights. First week with Dolly done and if you discount the initial 'directional issues' we think we've done pretty well and so far have been very happy campers...