Beaches

We’ve had a few days at the beach! After Brisbane, we drove to Sapphire Beach which was another one of our “little dots on the map”. It was very quiet but unfortunately the weather wasn’t great - quite cloudy and it actually poured with rain one day. The beach was near a small town called Coffs Harbour which was beautifully protected (lots of boats for John to look at!) and an almost-attached island (Muttonbird Island) which we walked over. It was incredibly windy - one of those bend your head into the wind and push winds - but worth the effort. The waves breaking on the rocks were quite spectacular, but very difficult to get a photo of! You wait and wait for the right wave to come along, and by the time it comes, you’ve looked off to the left and you’ve missed it again. Muttonbirds are apparently shearwaters which nest on the island in their thousands (but not at this time of year!)
After getting rather damp at Sapphire Beach, we drove further down the coast to Jimmy’s Beach (another “dot”). Jimmy’s Beach was very sheltered and shallow - great for kids but not much good for surfing. We managed to find a place that rented us boogie boards so we could go to the other side of the headland where there was much better surf and we had a couple of really nice days there. It was picture-perfect with miles of white sand, blue sea and sky and hardly any people. Anyone that we did meet was really friendly.
Our last beach day was with Zoe’s friends, Arnie and Brent who had just arrived from England when we landed on their doorstep at Umina Beach (about 100 km north of Sydney). I thought it was pretty brave of them to have us to stay as they’d only just got there, but we had a really nice 24 hours with them - more surfing and enjoying the gorgeous weather (which we showed Zoe on a Skype phone call - not sure how impressed she was sitting in cold and snowy Saskatoon!).
We’ve had a small frustration in that our cell phone has gone AWOL and we cannot find it, despite pulling the van apart about 5 times. It’s quite ridiculous how you keep looking in the same places - you know you’ve looked there before, but somehow you think it’s worth trying again. Of course we lost it in one of our “dot” places, so there was no chance to get another one in a hurry. We really need it to navigate through Sydney as there are lots of toll roads and you have to phone a different number for each toll road that you use so they can charge you. It seems a really complicated system, especially for rather nerve-racked tourists who don’t know where they’re going anyway, We are off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow (new cell phone in hand) so hope we can figure out how to make things work. We are nearly at the end of our campervan time - it’s been a really good experience and thank heavens we are used to living together in small places (boat and camper at home) as it is pretty cosy!