We love our nieces to pieces!

Central Coast & Newcastle 9th - 20th May

This next leg of our journey sees us catching up with family members.
Firstly parking our van literally in the front yard of Gary's niece Kelly, her husband Greg & their gorgeous daughters Audrie (7) & Ava (5).

With Kelly & Greg at work & the girls at school during the day we spent some of the time looking round 'The Entrance'. According to tourist info, this is where Tuggerah Lake meets the Pacific Ocean. It's a beautiful seaside / lakeside town. One of the highlights of the lake is the daily pelican feeding at 3.30 every day of the year. This is run very well by volunteers who give a little talk about Pelicans while hand feeding them copious quantities of fish. Before the official feeding, One of the volunteers goes out into the crowd dangling fish in between the crowd which causes the Pelicans to get VERY up close & personal. When he did it between Gary & I the pelican slapped me in the face with its bill. The skin on its bill is very soft so it just felt 'funny'. It was a great experience.

Each night, we helped the girls with their homework & had dinner together. We learnt a lot about Kelly & Greg's efforts to have a 'zero waste'  household. Wherever possible They do not purchase anything that comes in plastic or paper containers. They have glass jars that they take shopping & the butcher or bulk goods store they go to places the food directly into the glass jars. Bread & fruit & veg is placed in reusable calico or cloth bags. They are very dedicated & it is an admirable thing they're doing for our planet & future generations.

We love catching up with them & will definitely call back again on our way back down to Adelaide.

Next stop was Newcastle & staying with my niece Michelle & her fiance' Nathan & their almost 2 year old son Nixon. We were hoping to park the van in the front yard of their newly purchased house but is is on a very steep hill so wasn't possible. We were very grateful to Kelly & Greg for offering to look after the van for us while we stayed with Michelle.
Michelle & Nathan also had to work during the week so Gary & I amused ourselves during the day & then spent the evenings with them. Nathan loves to cook so insisted on doing all the cooking. As much as I enjoy cooking & am happy to cook for other people, it was great having a nice meal cooked for me every night.

Michelle took us into Newcastle city & around the beaches. We had lunch at their new 'Honeysuckle' waterside precinct. It was lovely. We then went to Fort Scratchley 'built in 1882 to defend the city against Russian attack' . It has a fantastic lookout across the waters of Newcastle.

Gary & I went for a walk across Memorial Walk, the locals call it ANZAC Walk which made it a bit difficult to find on Google Maps. It's a fantastic walkway of approx 500metres along the cliffs. Very picturesque & gave us a lot of opportunity to use my selfie stick.

We went for a quick visit to the Hunter Valley. The highlight was at one of the cellar doors where a group of Japanese tourists were enjoying taking selfies of EVERYTHING & took an instant fascination to little Nixon. They swarmed around him like he was a rockstar. He took it all in his stride & just stood there while they all basically took it in turns to have their photo with him.


Our visit with Michelle, Nathan & Nixon was over too soon & we also look forward to staying with them again on the way back down to Adelaide.

Next stop .......... Cooranbong