Spent the morning sandboarding on part of the 35km dunes which start nearby and run all the way most of the way down (40km +) to Newcastle. Disappointing compared to the crazy stunts we pulled in Fowlers Bay on our Nullabor trip. Looked for some local fish in Anna Bay. However the fish was from: Thailand, Phillipines, South Africa, Argentina, India and Taiwan. No Australian fish. We leave fishless in protest at the fish miles that have been accumulated in ai...

Dolphin watching cruise in the morning. Lots of dolphons in the harbour, eating their dolphin breakfasts. A-M sits in the boom net at the front of the boat as dolphins swim inches underneath. Many unsuccessful attempts at photos to capture said dolphins for posterity. Head for the beach in the afternoon. We are offered a lift by Bill & Aira from our YHA (we've just met them). Discover that they are heading for the nudist beach. A free lift is a free lift,...

Lots of Australian women think that wearing oversized sunglasses that look like they were nicked from their grannies is cool. Why?Caught bus to Shoal Bay then walked round the coast to Fingal Bay. Judged that the tide was low enough (waist high) for us to walk across the spit to reach the Port Stephens lighthouse; had the island to ourselves for a a while as most people we passed on the way back must have waited for the tide to get a bit lower (and heeded teh war...

By 10.am we'd checked out and boarded our first train for the trip to Port Stephens (about 4 hours up the NSW coast) where we were going to spend the last few days of the voyage. The train took us alongside the Hawkesbury River for some long stretches of beautiful landscape. It also took us through Gosford, where we got to see our 3rd A-League ground of the trip (Gosford is home of Central Coast Mariners; Sydney FC play at Aussie stadium which is next to the ...