Trying to re-live the experience!

It's been almost 4 months since our journey ended, the caravan has been sitting covered and forgotten (well, almost) at Dural, and we have all slotted back into our daily routines. At least we have summer and school holidays at the moment, but not for much longer. We decided to finally take the van out again over the Australia Day long weekend....and try and re-live the experience, but I guess a three day trip just doesn't quite match up against a 4 month trip. Oh well, no worries, it was fun.

We were very happy to see our old familiar mugs again. Can you work out which mug us for which family member?

First we headed up to Gosford for the boys to complete the third day of their sailing course. While they sailed (alone, no instructor on board!), Ayla, Cem and I hung about the neighbouring Olympic pool.

After the course presentation, we headed further north to Joy-Lynn and Bruces place at Bobs Farm on the Port Stephens peninsular. Extremely nice people, Oyster Farmers, who welcomed us wholeheartedly with afternoon tea and a very warm and friendly manner. It was lovely to stay on their 11 acre property and avoid the maddening holiday crowds closer to the coast. Ayla, Sol and I had been lucky enough to be invited up to Shoal Bay last week with Yve, Sarah and Harry. Thats why we came up here again, it was great, we enjoyed the beaches, climbing Tomaree Head, and we really wanted to show Cem and Kai. Heres our camp, Joy-Lynn and Bruce left the house open for us.

The weather forecast was completely wrong and we had great beach weather, it was hot!! We went back to Shoal Bay Beach, Little Beach and Samurai Beach. At Little Beach the kids jumped off the jetty again, despite being warned that there had been a shark sighting around the area earlier that day....

We boogie boarded down the sand dunes just off Nelson Bay Road. That was a hit! Photos don't quite capture the steepness of the dunes, but in the first photo you can see Kai way down the bottom which gives an indication.

Finally we spent a morning at Samurai Beach. What a different spot it was from last week. It was like a highway, you had to be careful of the passing traffic. Didn't pop up and say hi to Keith at the camp at the far end as I had intended, but we enjoyed the surf and the sand and the jumping.

We headed back on the Sunday pm to avoid the traffic, so glad we did, today (Monday - Australia Day) is rainy anyway, and glad we are not sitting bumper to bumper on the freeway right now. Nice little escape, Cem and I reckon we would have it all down pat the next lengthy trip we did......... we will see.

Here's a final photo of Ayla in the van.