FIRST BLOG FOR 2012

  

Glenbawn Dam

     

Tyson the cross doberman/mastiff nicknamed "big bear" 



One of the spectcular sunsets

Camp Cox top  campsite 5 star rating

Our hilltop view over glenbawn

Tyson going home with Mitchell and  Reece

Welcome back to our blog.  As this is the first one for this year, I’d like to wish you a belated Very Happy New Year and hope you had a wonderful Christmas with your families.

It’s been two months since my last blog.  As I mentioned at the end of last year’s blog, we’ve been based in our friend’s driveway at Warnervale, Central Coast.  They’ve very kindly opened their home for us and made us feel very welcome, wanted and loved.  We’ve been up and down to Sydney over Christmas and New Year staying with our children in Holsworthy, Sydney.  

Our eldest son Daniel left Sydney 6^th January to move to Perth.  He did a road trip with his friend and started a new job on 6^th January. He’s now in a house share in North Perth with a cousin of mine, enjoying his new lifestyle.  Unfortunately his job didn’t work out to be quite what he was led to think prior to leaving and he’s no longer there.  He says there’s plenty of work opportunities and is hoping to have a better job fairly soon. 

Our youngest son Adam moved in with his 2 sisters whilst we were there, so we were kept fully occupied helping them both relocate.  It was fortunate that the girls had to move to a bigger 3 bedroom house in November and had a spare room for Adam. 

Whilst we were at Warnervale we were also kept very busy helping Kate and Jeff with jobs around the house, sharing child minding during the school holidays and cooking when Kate was at work.  I felt like I was back at East Hills and running around all the time.   It was great to be able to help theut.

Our dogs Sally and Tyson got on extremely well.  Sally was a bit scared of Tyson at first as he's so big but he's just a big sooky teddy bear and loves us to death.  We always give him a big bone when we get there and he knows when we've arrived and howls under the side gate till we say hello to him and give him a bone.

Back to our travels:

Wednesday 24^th January – Lake Glenbawn Holiday Park (near Scone, Hunter Valley)  We spent 5 days there and were amazed at the amount of wild kangaroos jumping around so close to us.  There was also an incredible display of huge butterflies fluttering everywhere.  I don’t think we’ve ever seen so many wild ones at one spot before. The place was also abundant with birds.  It was an incredibly beautiful, peaceful spot.  The actual caravan park was 4km away from the water.  As we wanted to be closer to the water we bought a generator – a Kipor 2.6KVA .  Richard couldn’t wait to get there and try it out -  a big kid with a new toy!!!  It worked extremely well and we mainly used  it for cooking at night and charging the computer.   We found a lovely spot at the top of a hill overlooking the lake.  Our friends Kate and Jeff and their 2 boys Mitchell and Reece took their tent and we had a lovely time together once the heavy rain from our trip up there and the first day passed over.  It was amazing to see how fast the ground dried out from sopping wet mud when we arrived to totally dry by midday the following day.  Mitchell and Reece were keen to try out their kayak and spent many enjoyable hours in the water swimming and fishing.  There were some lovely walks around the area and a kiosk/coffee shop for basic supplies.  The trip took us 2 ½ hours from Warnervale.

Glenbawn Dam holds 1 ½ times as much water as Sydney Harbour and is a popular weekend spot for water skiing and boating.

Our friends left on Sunday 29^th and we were alone on the hilltop.  Unfortunately later that night we had a severe windstorm and the caravan was rocking, so we didn’t get much sleep.  Richard had rolled the awning in thankfully as we were leaving the following morning, otherwise it would have ripped to shreds.

Monday 30^th January  -  It was still very windy as we packed up to leave.  Our destination was Soldier’s Point in Nelson Bay.  We passed through the town of Aberdeen where they hold highland games every month.  We were going to the Bay to catch up with our friends Margaret and Colin that are based there until the end of March.  It took us 3 hours to get there.  The weather was glorious by the time we arrived.  It’s a medium sized park with lots of cabins, grassed area for camping and 2 areas for caravans.  It’s beside the Marina and a lovely spot, far from the madness of Nelson Bay itself.  There was a gorgeous large salt water swimming pool/spa and I was keen to have a swim as soon as I’d caught up with the washing.  It’s an expensive area and low peak rates were $40 per night (yikes).  Luckily we weren’t staying too long.   We’ve been to Nelson Bay many times when the kids were younger, but hadn’t been to Soldier’s Point.  We had a few drives around Lemon Tree Passage and Tanilba -  beautiful little coastal towns that haven’t been spoilt by new mansions and tourism.   We spent the evenings with our friends and enjoyed their company once again chatting and making plans to meet up again in either South Australia or Western Australia.  On our last night we had dinner at Soldier’s Point Bowling Club and were surprised to see Pauline Hanson and her boyfriend sitting 2 tables behind us. 

Friday 3^rd February  -  We headed back to “Base Camp Cox” at  Warnervale and hurriedly packed and repacked for our last trip to Sydney to see the children before we take off on the next part of our Trip Round Oz.

It’s lovely to see the family again and catch up with as many friends as we’re able to in a few days.  Apologies to those we didn’t manage to see.

Wednesday 8^th February – We headed back to “Base Camp Cox” to spend the next few days doing a complete spring clean/overhaul of the interior and exterior of the van and car in preparation for the “big  off” on 13^th February.

Saturday 11^th February  -  Rod Stewart Concert at Hope Winery, Hunter Valley.  Richard bought tickets for Rod’s concert for me for Christmas and this was the reason we were at Warnervale for longer than we’d planned.  Well we’ve had lots of heavy storms all week and it wasn’t looking too good for an outdoor concert.  Even as we were leaving it was pouring down and got heavier as we got to Cessnock.  The sky ahead looked very grim.  Luckily by the time we got there the skies had cleared and it turned out to be  a beautifully mild night. We’d packed big umbrellas, raincoats and a tarpaulin just in case.   Walking through the car park we were amazed at how many RV vehicles were parked there overnight.  There were at least 20 plus a few caravans, tents and people sleeping overnight in the backs of their cars.  It looked like the car park at Melbourne Cup with everyone sitting around drinking wine and chatting. 

We were in general admission and brought a rug to sit on.  We found a good spot behind the barricade to the left of the stage.  The evening was just perfect, very mild weather, no rain in sight and everyone sitting around drinking and chatting and having a lovely time.  Diesel was the support act.  We hadn’t heard him play before and were very surprised at just how good he was.  I must say the whole event was so well organised with plenty of toilets and a good food court set up in tents to cater for all tastes.  Wine was $35 a bottle which is to be expected at an event like that.  We had a lovely massaman beef and Singapore noodles.  They were $15 each and were delicious.

We had a good chuckle when we saw a “Rod lookalike” roaming around. He was posing for photos with groups of girls and plonking himself down uninvited on peoples’ rugs.  He was pretty drunk by this stage and thought he was just wonderful.  The first time I saw him I had to do a double take as he was very convincing.  He was definitely “working the crowd”.

When Rod came on we raced down to the barricade just under the stage to the left and were so close.  We had a fantastic view of the whole concert.  It was brilliant with 2 drummers, 2 guitarists, 3 female singers, a female saxophone/trumpet player, female violinist and another male sax player.  The stage was pure white with big R O D letters and flashing lights around them.  He is a superb performer and came out dressed in black pants and  shirt with bright pink jacket and tie and pink suede shoes.  Despite being 67 he’s got incredible energy, looks really fit and can still hit the high notes.  We danced for the whole 2 hours he was on and thought the Hope Winery was a fantastic venue as we hadn’t seen a concert there before.\

The night was topped off by a great firework display that lasted about 20 minutes.  We walked back to the carpark with everyone cranking up “Maggie May” on their car stereos on the way out.  Those that were staying went back to their RV’s and carried on drinking outside.  It was a wonderful night.

In our next blog we'll be heading off for The Great Ocean Road so don't forget to look on our blog again soon.  Love for now Marian,  Richard and Sally