Yesterday, Sue and I headed north up the coast to Port Stephens. Our goal was Tomaree, a mountain near the town of Shoal Bay. Tomaree has a climb with a lookout at the top. The climb wasn’t too difficult, but it was very, very hot (apparently it got to 37) so we took our time.
And it was worth it! Here are a few shots from the top:
Look at the colour of that water! (Remember you can click on the images to enlarge them). Even though it was hot at the top, there was a great breeze and we lingered a while.
On the way down, this fellow was waiting in the path:
I’d say he was about a metre long, and he was in no hurry to move out of our way!
The mountain held gun emplacements during WW2. We visited the remains of the two large guns halfway up the mountain, and then when we got to the bottom went and had a look at what was left of one of the surf guns:
The guns were there to protect Port Stephens from possible Japanese attack. They were manned by old soldiers (WW1 veterans), were never fired in anger and were put to rest shortly after the war.
Here’s a close-up of what the waters edge looked like on one of the bayside beaches (first photo of this blog shows a bay beach):
We swum at one such beach, and the water was FREEZING! As in ‘lose-your-breath-and-die’ freezing (<- slight exaggeration there). Needless to say we weren’t in the water long, but at least I can say I had a dip in the pacific 🙂
Lunch. Lunch, lunch. Lunch was maybe the worst I ever had. We ate at a restaurant called Hogs Breath, and they served me a god-damn raw fish burger. I mean how do you fry a piece of fish and have it raw (and cold) in the middle? Such an act of staggering incompetence (as Sue said, even McDonalds trains teenagers to produce edible food) must only result in utter bankruptcy for the entire chain 🙂
On the way back to Newcastle, we stopped at the very north end of Stockton Beach:
I could write an entire entry about Stockton Beach (and shattered dreams) but you can hopefully see from these images that the sand dunes are as impressive as ever. They extend more than 1 km from the water’s edge, and tower as high as small skyscrapers. Look closely in the second photo to a glint in the distance to the top-left of the car (which is not that far from the camera). That glint is the roof of a second car which is much closer to the dunes. That gives you some scale as to how massive the dunes actually are.
It was a great day yesterday! I salute you Sue, for being a great friend!
But today, after two days of intense walking, I have to admit I am fried. My feet, muscles, hands and cerebellum hurts. I don’t want to see sunblock ever again, and the most strenuous activity I have planned for today looks something like this:
