Brisbane Trip Day 4: Newcastle -> Crowdy Bay National Park

The girls and I were up early enough to say goodbye to their cousins and uncle. I spent a bit of time organising things on the computer, then started packing up while the kids took advantage of having access to the internet and the Netflix. It was hot and steamy and I was sweating a LOT by the time I was halfway through packing. I’d taken a lot of stuff out of the trailer so that we could put the beach things close to the tailgate in case we wanted to grab snorkels or boogie boards at a beach while travelling – so it was a big job putting everything back in.

Eventually I had it all sorted and we drove up to see Tony’s Dad (near Raymond Terrace) for lunch. The kids played with the dog and the girls and I had a swim, we made our sandwiches and hung out for a while.

The next part of the drive was familiar to me as I used to come this way on my way to Uni at Armidale. After the Buckets Way it was less familiar although I have driven up this way several times. We saw nets that had been strung up high across the road between trees on either side, for animals to safely cross the highway - we'd never seen that before. Both sides of the highway were fenced so that animals couldn't run onto the road. At one place we saw a sign warning of wild horses and a bit further on we saw 3 or 4 grazing near the fence, it was pretty cool. It was a fairly easy drive up to Crowdy Bay National Park – I went in the northern entrance, near Laurieton, so that there was less unsealed road to drive on. The 6km in to Diamond Head Camping Ground was fairly corrugated at times, although not a problem to drive over, just very slow and uncomfortable. We arrived at the campground around 5, but the office had closed at 4.30, so we decided to head on to Kylie’s campground and come back in the morning to pay. The campground at Diamond Head looked like a caravan park, with gutters on the roads and designated sites; I wanted to go somewhere with more bush camping.

As I was checking out the office Liam saw a goanna walking through the campground – we watched it for a while (I saw it doing a poo) and laughed at the way the kangaroos seemed quite wary of it. We also got a glimpse of the ocean – the surf looked rough.

We drove over to Kylie’s Campground – more corrugations but not as many as on the main road in. The campground looked inviting and peaceful, and there weren’t many people there. We drove in to an area with no other campers, and debated about the best place to set up – there was a very inviting area under several trees, so I put the trailer in there. We decided to go and check out the beach before we did any more setting up – I was feeling quite tired and felt like a beach visit would rejuvenate me.

The beach here was gorgeous – a colourful headland at the northern end, then several rock formations in and along the edge of the water with the waves breaking over and around them. The surf was rough here too, it didn’t look safe at all for swimming. Some of the rocks were out of the waves at this point, so we clambered over them and looked for shapes in the rocks, watched the waves, and found a colony of crabs.

Back at the trailer we realised that there were huge numbers of mosquitoes under the trees, so I moved out into a cleared area. We set the tent up fairly quickly and easily. Amelie wasn’t happy, she didn’t like the bush camping area or the drop toilets or the beach and she really wanted to go somewhere else. After she’d had some food she cheered up and happily helped with the rest of the set up. Caitlin and Liam went for a bike ride and Liam came back finding it hard to breathe. It was extremely humid and I think that contributed to his asthma attack. He was quite worried by it, as he’s rarely had one off attacks – usually when he’s found it that hard to breathe nothing has helped until we have gone to the hospital. This time however he was able to alleviate it with ventolin and he gradually calmed down.

We had sandwiches for tea and headed to bed. I was feeling a bit apprehensive about whether this really was a good place to stay for a couple of nights, but figured I was tired and I often felt that way after a day of travel. We headed in to bed to read for a while, and just before I fell asleep it started pouring – we’d opened all the windows to cool the tent down a little so luckily I was still awake and could jump out and close them all.