Port Stephens

We’re staying in a Eco-lodge (www.wanders-retreat.com.au) as it sounds so lovely. Wooden cabins, set amongst Eucalyptus trees with koalas often spotted nearby and just a 5 minute walk to the beach. It’s all as lovely as promised, including the koalas who kindly fall asleep in a nearby tree on the short walk to One Mile Beach, but we’re all struggling with the rotaloo. It looks like a normal toilet, except that, instead of a bowl beneath your bottom, there’s a 5 foot drop to the ground where a blade rotates everything a few times a day. Not only are we all paranoid about being bitten on the bottom by a mossie/red back/snake, we’re becoming constipated by our refusal to use it, except in emergencies. I’m still feeling sick from my drugging and the thought of hanging my head over that toilet should I need to is enough to prompt me to the internet café to find our next hotel, this time one of the Mantra hotels, right in town. It’s gorgeous, although not at all Eco-friendly. Great apartment, great pool and a fully flushing toilet, putting us all in such a great mood, we’re up for a spot of sand-surfing. A 4-wheel drive takes us out to the sand dunes on Stockton Bight, the longest moving sand dunes in the southern hemisphere, stretching 35km up to Newcastle. It’s an awesome sight with an eerie yellow glow rising off the dunes and, as we drive into them, you can get a real feeling of being in the desert. We’re dropped at the top of a steep hill of sand, given a board which we park our bottoms on and whoosh, we’re off! It’s exhilarating flying down the sand dunes but very hot, hard work hiking back up. The kids cope admirably with the both the heat and the hike, it’s only Will and I who are out of breath by the time we get back to the top. Suitably exhilarated, we head to Samurai Beach (clothing optional) and, finding that you need a 4-wheel drive to get there, decide to park the car and walk through. Fortunately for us, we’d only been walking for a minute when a couple in a 4-wheel drive pull up and offer us a lift. Very lucky indeed, since it was a good 5 minute off-piste drive before we hit the beach. A naked dip revives us sufficiently to make us wonder how we’re going to get back to the car and I’m just thinking about shaking my booty at one of the fat-bellied, small-willied men that seem to be suddenly prowling this stretch of beach when Will realises that we’re just a short scramble across the rocks to One Mile Beach, which is much closer to the road. Slightly too late, we realise that the tide is coming in and cutting off our path over the rocks and we end up battling with the tide, holding Ruby in one hand, bag containing camera and phone high above my head in the other, and managing to slice my foot open on a rock in the process. A lovely walk along the beach and a short walk over the dunes to the road just leaves Will to go and collect the car. As he trots off into the distance, I flag down a car and ask the guy to please pick him up and drop him off where our car is parked. Sure thing he says, just as soon as I’ve finished my phone call (ok, I didn’t flag him down, he happened to be stopping nearby to take a call and I leaned in through the window, but which one makes a better story, huh?). I was disappointed to notice that he didn’t even slow down as he passed a puffing Will. We find a some tea rooms on the top of the cliff at Nelson Head giving us a fantastic lunch-time view and Will’s determined to get us all hiking to the top of the local peninsular for spectacular views and possible sightings of dolphins or whales. We think we got lucky but upon closer inspection our sighting turns out to be people in kayaks.