There’s lots of murals all over Newcastle, both conventional and graffiti style, but this one halfway up Hunter Street must be my favourite:
Here’s detail of the girl in the crystal ball, who is only a few cm in height:
What a lovely piece of work!
Camping
That’s Sue, who I’ve known for years, and who is an expert on the manufacture of Weetbix. She’s been suggesting for ever that we go camping during my stay, and thus year we did! So the other day Sue, me, her two kids and her niece went to the Allyn River campgrounds in the Barrington Tops, about 2 hours NW of newcastle.
That’s my room above, which was the tent on the left. Hardly the Hilton, but comfy enough that I slept like the dead after our busy day!
But I get ahead of myself! We did the usual campground activities of hiking…
Swimming…
Cooking sausages (this is Oz, after all)…
And sparklers around the fire…
Although truth be told, due to the kids most of the time was spent at the two swimming holes along the river 🙂
I enjoyed camping quite a lot, although I wonder if I would have had we continued beyond one night. Truth is the campgrounds were much closer together and busy than in America and camping here is extremely popular with the, shall we say, ‘less cultured’ type 😉
That’s a Brush Turkey, one of the many animals we saw. Probably the highlight of the trip for me was waking at sunup (just before 5) and seeing many little pademelons in and around the campgrounds, including two not 3 meters from my tent entrance!
Thanks to Sue for taking me camping. I enjoyed it greatly, and it may be time to dig out the old tent and camp again in the US.
The New Castle
Shortly after the new year, I took the train to Newcastle. I’ve been here 11 days now, and it’s been the usual relaxing mix of family and friends and nostalgia.
That was taken the day I blew into town. Bernard and Lakshmi were in Australia already, and the five of us were together for the first time ever.
We ate…
We played…
And we had a lot of fun together. The above was then at Blackbutt, where we went to see the animals.
Mum and dad are great, and there usual cheery selves. Here they are with two of their Christmas gifts (a necklace KLS made and a new iPad):
The weather has been mostly extremely humid and hot, with rain falling only these past two days. As I usually do I’ve gone on some epic walks all around the area, including the beaches…
And the entire (15+ km) Fernleigh Track (in 30C+ temperatures no less):
Over the last week and a half there was lots of this…
And this…
And at the end of most of the hot, active days I often looked like this:
I also caught up with all my Novocastrian friends which is one of those happy-sad things since I hate goodbyes.
I’ll leave the camping trip for the next post!
Tomorrow I return to Sydney for all sorts of (as yet unknown) fabulous activities. You can look forward to details right here!