Australia #15 - Gerroa, Karuah and Nambucca Heads - New South Wales

Gerroa, Karuah and Nambucca Heads - three more places we'd never heard of, just stopovers on the way to somewhere else, as we continue our roadtrip up the east coast from New South Wales into Queensland. When we leave Canberra it is cloudy but still hot, and later in the day we will be in the low-30s Celsius again. We drive more or less east on the Federal Highway and Remembrance Driveway, where every rest area is named after a recipient of the Victoria Cross.

A rainy morning, Seven Mile Beach, Nambucca Heads.

Eventually we turn off the motorway about an hour west of Sydney, and letting our GPS lead the way we have a very interesting descent and ascent on either side of the Kangaroo Valley, nice views and forest stretches but on the ascent in parts almost a one track road. Thankfully there are guardrails!

Kia Sportage, thankfully with aircon and CD player, alongside our cabin at Gerroa.

We arrive at our overnight caravan park in Gerroa around 1:30, a nice unit with a river view, lots of birds in the trees between our cabin and the river, and for the first time on our trip lots of mosquitoes. Fortunately we've come prepared with two 'zappers', small devices you plug into an electrical outlet to heat a small tab, releasing some chemical that kills mosquitoes. We first used these in the 1980s in Germany, and again in Portugal a few years ago when a particularly wet winter resulted in lots of the annoying little beasts, who will always find me before they attack anyone else! Not knowing what we might encounter on our roadtrip we thought they'd be a nice portable and effective solution. They're not available in North America however, because we have these interesting devices called door and window screens, so after much research we had a friend in the UK mail us 2 units and lots of tabs. A nice fresh breeze is coming off the sea so we open all the windows and enjoy a stay without aircon.

Gerroa Boat Fisherman's Club, high on the ridge to the left, has great views out to sea. Unfortunately we were too busy catching up with an old friend to take many photos!

We did get one however!

At the Australian War Memorial in the Vietnam hall I notice a reference to an Australian colleague who I knew from a year-long military staff course we both attended in Canada in the early 1980s. brightonbonnie suggests we look him up. I had thought about it, but we'd last seen each other over 30 years ago, and Australia, like Canada, is a big country, right? brightonbonnie insists I try to find him, and that evening, because he's a published author, I do. Now remember I'm making our caravan bookings 7 to 10 days in advance, so Gerroa was booked back when we were in Adelaide. A great surprise then when my colleague replies almost immediately to my email query and we discover he lives about 15 minutes from Gerroa!

and brightonbonnie also got this shot on the drive back to our cabin.

Late afternoon we meet our friend at the Gerroa Boat Fisherman’s Club, only about 600 meters from our park! It's a wonderful spot with great views of the beach and sea. We pick up almost where we’d been 33 years ago, and have an interesting and comic time catching up. Karma!

Another in-car shot, of the Pacific Highway.

We had stopped at Gerroa to position ourselves for the drive north through Sydney. The next day there's lots of traffic and a few interesting issues, e.g. a stretch where there's no motorway, just two lanes in both directions, and making a left turn I realize just in time there's no short merge lane, just a yield line with a very large and very fast heavy goods lorry about an inch off my right fender.

Port Macquarrie waterfront.

We eventually come out the north side of Sydney more or less intact, and have a more relaxing drive from then on. We arrive at Karuah Jetty Holiday Park around 2:30, the sun beating down and still 30 degrees, and as a reward head to the pool, full of Moms and Dads and many many kids. Little by little they fade away and we have a pleasant couple of hours.

Verandah at the Beach House.

The next day we have another great drive on the Pacific Highway, except for a few stretches where they are doing a massive upgrade to four lanes and speeds are reduced to 80. Overall the driving is very relaxing, because everyone, due to radar cameras, obeys the speed limit, and also because our Kia, swapped out in Canberra due to aircon issues with our first SUV, has a CD player, and we play a lot of our own music brought from Canada. We stop at Port Macquarrie for lunch at the Beach House, right on the water with a nice table on the verandah, where for the first time I have a Balmain Bug, a cross between crab and lobster.

Balmain Bug.

We arrive at our third overnight stop at Nambucca Heads. The caravan park is in a lovely setting beside the beach; our cabin is a little tired but due to the weekend booking it’s all we could get. After settling in we hit the pool, and are surprised there’s no kids and hardly anyone else.

Ulmarra Hotel.

The next day it's cloudy with some drizzle or rain throughout the day. We walk on Seven Mile Beach for almost an hour, a few people out with their dogs chasing balls into the surf and a few surfers, despite the warnings for sharks, stingers, and rips!

Another view of Seven Mile Beach, a dog tempting the surf and possibly a shark!

Another interesting drive the next day with lots of roadworks and at times slow traffic due to caravans and the odd truck. We see a few banana plantations, then lots of sugar cane and two large sugar refineries, all new to us. We stop at a historic village, Ulmarra, on the Clarence River, for flat whites (by now we're used to Aussie coffee lingo) and sweets at the Ulmarra Hotel Café Clarence, a nice setting outdoors overlooking the river, before we continue on our way on the last leg before the Gold Coast!

So join me there in my next post.

PS - if you've enjoyed this post please check out the previous 14 posts in this series, and the 3 before that as we started our 90-day roadtrip in Tahiti! Probably 10 posts to go in Oz as we head further north all the way to Cairns, then on to a month in New Zealand!

PPS - if you've really enjoyed this post please support me by upvoting me at https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@accelerator/six-of-the-best-map26-minnow-contest-vote-now-win-upvotes - just scroll down until you get to comments, scroll down some more until you find my introductory comment, then upvote it directly (and add a reply if you are so inclined). Thanks in advance...

Thanks to @benfenson for watching over my Oz posts!

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!steemitworldmap -32.654942 lat 151.970037 long Karuah New South Wales Australia d3scr