The coastline travelling further south is really fantastic with lots of lovely beaches often hidden away from the main highway. The next camp was at North Haven where we found a nice quiet sheltered seaside camp as a storm set in for the night. The morning brought clearing weather so we hit the road to the next stopover at Taree. Our van managed to get a nasty windscreen chip so she was booked in for a new screen, amazingly they had one in stock and were able to do it while we took time out exploring the main shopping area of the town. Steph had time for a pedicure and a haircut while I settled for a wander around and a feed at a noodle house. Our home for the night was at a local Show Ground quite close to town which made the van repair and the day very enjoyable.
We left the next morning and headed towards Newcastle as we had never been there before. We were amazed at how big it is so after finding a Bunnings to get some things we needed decided to hightail it out of there and find somewhere smaller. The town of Blacksmiths was our next stopover and had a motor camp that had a vehicle washing bay so our grubby van received a much overdue spruce up. Only a further 40kms down the road we came across the beautiful river mouth town of The Entrance that had a motor camp that overlooked the river and town so we just had to book in for the night. It was great relaxing and chilling out in this very panoramic campsite on a warm sunny day after a long walk around the waterfront. This is a very popular holiday destination as it is quite close to Sydney with the river and beach being very safe for kids to swim in.This would be a very easy place to live in for a while. Back on the motorway next morning as we headed into Sydney the traffic became so thick that driving our large motor home became a nightmare. As we had not had much interest in our van while being advertised on Gumtree and with the RV centre in Melbourne not wanting it we decided to let the RV super Centre at Penrith sell the van on our behalf which they were keen to do.This was a last minute decision but with the traffic being so heavy around Sydney and probably further south the decision was made to leave the van there and get a rental car to travel about Sydney and then travel on to Melbourne. We were allowed to camp in our van in the sales yard for the night and although we were locked in we had the keys to everything including the main offices where we could use the shower and toilets. Poor Steph was stressed out to the max as the van had to be completely emptied out and rid of all our possessions that could not be taken back to NZ. It was really difficult but by 11am next morning our rental car was fully loaded and we were saying goodbye to what had been our lovely home for a total of 10 months. This was not part of the master plan but sometimes things change very quickly and also this suited the future plans that we have recently made.