Barb & John's Hols: Aussie Road Trip Day Nineteen Friday 2nd August

Heading to the beach

Today was our last really long leg of the journey, driving from Katoomba to Port Macquarie on the central NSW coast. John and I were chauffered while first Ailsa and then David took turns with the driving. We left Katoomba around 7am and tried our best to avoid the worst of the commuter traffic heading Sydneywards. Instead we skirted around the perimeter of the city via Windsor and Hornsby, eventually gaining the highway headed towards Newcastle.

This strategy worked well, and apart from being held up by roadworks - which could happen anywhere - and slowed down by school zones in a few places, we made very good time to our breakfast destination at The Entrance near Gosford.

David Ailsa and John .... guess where?

Not Cottontree .....

The Entrance is a gorgeous holiday town very reminiscent of Cottontree on the Sunshine Coast. We had a bit of a look around this very pretty area, and thought it would be a great family holiday destination with its interesting and colourful children's playground and water feature in the park beside the beach and its safe swimming areas. It wasn't terribly busy, being winter and not school holidays. I imagine in summer it is heaving with happy noisy children.

The colourful water feature at the Entrance

A lovely holiday spot

By contrast, Old Bar (where we stopped for lunch) had a beach that looked quite UNsafe! We watched large dumping waves roll onto the shore, which from the safety of the walkway to the beach appeared to have sandbars and rips in abundance. It was clear they've suffered the same recent beach erosion as the Gold and Sunshine Coasts .... it was a bit of a drop from the walkway to the actual beach. We dined at a local eatery called Bon Appetit. They were displaying some artwork from a local artist called Peter Schouten, whose very detailed wildlife and landscapes appealed to me way more than some of the art on display at the National Gallery that we saw in Canberra. The food wasn't bad either. David's track record of choosing good places remains unblemished.

Now that's a sandwhich

The beach at Old Bar

We arrived at Port Macquarie just before 4pm and headed straight to the beach for a walk while the sun still shone.

We parked at Gaol lookout and were surprised by just how much of a salt spray haze surrounded the entrance to the harbour. There was a pretty decent surf happening off the point, so we walked along the beachside path for a closer look. We walked around to the Flagstaff lookout which dates back to 1821 when Port Macquarie first became a penal settlement.

We got a very good view of the (obligatory) lone brave surfer and were very relieverd to identify that the fin we'd noticed not far from him was actually a pod of dolphins and not a shark. Phew!