Port Stephens

Our recently acquired ’91 Toyota Tarago was loaded with bags the night before a planned dawn flit across Sydney because I wanted to arrive at the Harbour Bridge as the sun came up for the best views. It’s almost getting to the point of doing a roll call when everyone goes out and Lottie, Scarlett and Ted dropped into their seats in pyjamas, while Zoe, Alistair and friend Chris bundled in the other seats and Archie’s box went under the feet of a little one on the floor.

We still don’t have a talking map box for the dashboard, apparently when they first became affordable over here GPS’s weren’t very good, sending people into the Harbour or worse and have never been fully trusted since.

However we do have a talking map book in the passenger seat. One that says things like,

“Look, we’re just here, right, and we need to go over there.” Pointing to a tiny road on the map, 

“There. That way, look, no, no, that one, take that turn just there”. Gesticulating wildly from the passenger seat as if I am going to understand perfectly where we should be going.

Very helpful, whatever happened to next left, turn right at the lights and straight on at the next roundabout I’ll never know. Fortunately for this trip we didn’t need such accurate directions as I’d already read, heard and guessed that we should take the Pacific Highway from Sydney harbour Bridge, the F3 freeway to Port Stephens and turn off at Hawk’s Nest. And that’s how easy it turned out to be; all 240km of it.

We did arrive at the Cahill Expressway just as the morning sun had lit up the Harbour Bridge over on our right in all its iron glory, the ferries busying themselves across the harbour and the iconic Opera House sails basking in the morning sun. It was a beautiful way to see the harbour.

The name Pacific Highway conjures up images of some sweeping three lane open road cutting through the coastline with views across majestic bays and rolling surf. No such thing I’m afraid. Through the north of Sydney it’s a scary stretch of road packed with rush-hour traffic on extremely narrow lanes (there are three in each direction but I’m convinced there used to be two and they’ve simply re-painted the lane markings) with houses, shops and very suburban surroundings to contest with. It’s a main road in and out of Sydney so one would expect it to be busy but every now and then there are cars parked on the nearside lane outside little shops making it necessary to get out into the flow and swap lanes, so as not to get stuck behind something parked. The middle lane is therefore the best place to sit even if it’s not best practice.

We dived into a McDs for brekkie to give us a chance to invade the baby room and change everyone into clothes, where Scarlett and Ted had great fun jumping around warming themselves under the hand dryer and like a scene from the movies we all emerged smart and ready for the day. The foodstuff this institution churns out still continues to amaze me in its processed uselessness but the pancakes went down well and as expected the coffee is still rubbish.

Not much more of a push up the freeway and we were turning off to Hawk’s Nest which would be home for a couple of days. Key and linen picked up and we found the little cottage across from the beach and unpacked a few things before venturing onto the beach to play. Beautiful white sand and miles of it and all this in the middle of winter! Hawk’s Nest is a tiny seaside town and as such has very limited facilities but just back over the Singing Bridge is Tea Gardens with a hotel in the main street where you can get probably the best fish n chips you’ re likely to taste for miles. They also serve a fairly decent pint of Guinness on tap! Hotels found in little towns across Australia are the equivalent of British village pubs and serve as community centres, meeting points as well as providing the all too necessary bottle shop and betting office.

All in all the area turned out to be a good little find and the following couple of days were quite a break from the normal day to day stuff. Saturday afternoon saw the arrival of my Uncle and his wife from Queensland in a rented red roadster and we anticipated a good feed at dinner time in the town’s Chinese restaurant. It turned out they were quite unprepared for the deluge of guests and the forty-five minute wait just for food had the littlies way past their good-behaviour timespan, with colouring pads all filled in, stories and table games all finished, loo visits exhausted and things becoming just a tad fraught. A plate of prawn crackers went part way to calming things but the plate wasn’t big enough and the starving kids had it cleared in seconds!

Much more successful was the boat trip across the bay to Nelson’ Bay the following day which is very much the same kind of town only bigger. Lottie’s first time on a boat (well first time she could actually enjoy; trips as a baby on a cross-channel ferry don’t really count) had her running around up at the bow finding the rocking motion just too good to ignore. Squeals of delight as the wind took our breath away couldn’t dampen her enthusiasm for this new found activity.

A truly impressive sight as we motored out of the estuary was the soaring grace of a sea eagle, its unmistakable form against the skyline until now something I’d only ever seen in books and films. As it wheeled around and the sun hit its brown back it was easy to pick out the colouring of its white tail. 

Pretty much as promised by the Tourist Board the pod of dolphins that live in the bay turned up on cue for a blow around the boat and everyone took delight in their presence. It’s been quite a while since I’ve seen dolphins but it will always send tingles along my spine and raise goose-bumps all over when I see those dorsal fins cut through the choppy water and I have no difficulty at all picturing their bottlenose faces smiling away at us on the boats. I think a person would have to be truly soul-less to remain unmoved by these creatures.

We weren’t really geared up for a day in Nelson’s Bay. There hadn’t been enough room in the Tarago to pack Lottie’s buggy so her much needed snooze proved difficult to do, plus we didn’t have a clue where to head for in order to entertain everyone. After an impromptu reptile display (Crocodiles teeth are visible when their jaws are shut, alligators’ are not) the Teens headed off for a wander round town and we camped out in a Hog’s Breath Café for a snack and a coffee. Afterwards the littlies had a bounce on the bungey-trampoline but it was the buckets and spades and a little piece of sandy beach that again saved the day. The ferry took us back on time and we tipped straight out into the aforementioned hotel for a refreshing pint or two of G lined up with our names on.

On another lazy afternoon at a place called Bennet’s Beach several bottlenose dolphins could be seen having fun in the rollers with the surfers. Swimming into the waves we could watch them surfing the crest and then flicking off to the back of the wave and jumping clear out of the water, sometimes no more than a metre from the surfers and their boards. And the only reason they could be doing that was to have some fun. Looking up and down the miles and miles of beach with the azure ocean rolling up to the white sand, picking out the odd little four wheel drive vehicle winding along the sand had me just wondering at the beauty and simplicity of it all. There was nobody harming anybody else, nobody damaging anything, just simple enjoyment to be in some wonderful natural surroundings. 

All too soon it was time to pack the car and head off back to Sydney. The teenagers gathered up their things from the lower level retreat, an ideal set-up that had been and we scurried through the place with a pan and brush to clean up. One more walk with the dog along the beach and off it was, F3-bound, but not before dropping off the key at the agents. We’d almost traveled halfway to the freeway before remembering the laundry bag sitting at our feet and U-turned back to sling it out at the Laundromat. We survived the endless “are we nearly there yets” that amazingly started within half an hour and arrived home in time to get the body boards out and catch a few late afternoon rollers down at Elouera Beach.

Tarago to go

Following eight months sterling service as the family car the Rocket’s been relieved of transportation duties after we got our hands on a Toyota Tarago. Why this car hasn’t been marketed all over the world I’ll never know, how it’s become an Australian icon along with the likes of Land Cruisers, Tooheys beer and jumping marsupials is easy to understand. 

As people carriers go it has no equal, it’s got eight seats, one single sliding door, which can be a nuisance when trying to load people in a hurry but is also a godsend for keeping the kids in until you’re ready to get out, it still has a boot space because all of its eight seats are permanently configured, the automatic versions allow easy access through to the rear of the car to sort out twisted seat belts, spilt drinks, lost toys, fights and other civil disturbances, it’s good on gas, easy to park and a doddle to drive. And of course being a Toyota it has that legendary quality all Toyotas possess in that it does nothing exceptionally but everything well. 

A nice way of saying it borders on being boring, but for the purposes of our needs it’s far from boring. 

This one has a tow bar as well so we won’t need to spend extra when it comes to acquiring the small tin boat that is almost standard requirement in this part of Australia. The seating arrangement also means we can locate the littlies in their own ‘space’ thus avoiding the situation that was developing with the Merc whereby Lottie, in the middle, had learned how to whack both Ted, on one side, and Scarlett on the other thus starting squabbles between all three of them and not getting caught. 

Spotted in the auto trader small ads, it’s a 1991 model with close on three hundred thousand kilometres under its wheels, the creamy smooth automatic gearbox has been overhauled after a reversing manouvre with a boat destroyed the backward gear and the bodywork has been spruced up with a couple of coats of two-pac silver so it looks fresh. And unless that’s hiding something more sinister it’s turned out to be a great afternoon’s work, but then we knew they were good after the four wheel drive version of the same car we had in Switzerland. The Merc’s now even more pleasant to be in without the commotion on board but somehow I miss that little row of action spread across the back seat.