We are heading to a motel near the airport in readiness for our flight to Hobart tomorrow.
The Glen Innes motel has an included breakfast from 7:00am. We had showers and went to the breakfast room. The breakfast included, a choice of cereals, toast, fruit and yoghurt.
After breakfast, we packed the car and were on the road just after 8:00.
First stop was Tenterfield at a rest stop we have been to a couple times before.
Next stop was Warwick where I needed to do a bit of computer work. I decided the bast place to do this would be the library. I asked the librarian where I could set up and she showed me to a quiet corner with a next and powerpoint for my laptop.
Work completed, we found the picnic ground in Queens Park. We made our sandwiches and I looked at the plaques and very large statue that celebrate Warwick’s love of all things “horse”
From Warwick it was an easy drive toward Brisbane. Traffic got very heavy as we hit Ipswich, but ran at speed all the way to Northgate.
We arrived at our accommodation and put everything from the car into the room so I could repack everything to go to Tasmania and what would be left in the car at Brisbane airport.
Dinner, a bit of TV and bed ready for an exciting time in Hobart.
Waking up this morning was a little bit sad knowing we are saying goodbye to the family. We will not see them again for a few months.
We had breakfast, finished packing, checked we had everything before checking out and going to the family to have a hot shower and then on to Glen Innes.
We last travelled the New England Hwy from the Hunter Valley through to Qld on our roadtrip in Dec 2019.
This trip was much more relaxed with no major bush fires to contend with. Our first stop was. little town called Aberdeen. We found the rest stop and had a cup of tea and I had a read of the plaques that explained some of the town’s history. As you can imagine, from the name “Aberdeen” the town was settled by Scottish immigrants who came looking for their fortunes. (read more here)
Back on the road and our next stop was Tamworth for lunch. We found Woolworths, bought some bread and ham and looked on the map for a park. There was a huge park on the side of the river. It was another big council playground/park similar to the one we had been at with the boys a couple of days ago..
Next stop was Armidale for a cuppa and a stretch of the legs. We found the information centre and it had a large park beside it.
Final stop was our accommodation for the night. The Glen Innes motel is clean and comfortable and perfectly suitable for a night before we continue on to Brisbane tomorrow.
As we had no hot water in the unit, M had a cold shower and I had a warm “bird bath”. We had our breakfast and set off to have a look at a motel we had seen online that is much closer to the family’s house.
We found the motel and saw that the cleaners were busy cleaning, so we asked if we could have a quick look at some rooms. They were happy to oblige and we were more than happy with the rooms. The motel looks like it has not long ago had a refurbishment and the rooms are bright, clean and spacious. We will certainly be booking in here the next time we are down.
After the motel viewing we went around to the family to see what the plan was for the day. It was decided that we would take the boys to a skate park they had not been to and then go to the Swansea RSL for lunch.
The boys had lots of fun at the skate park on their scooters and bikes, and it was lovely sitting in the sun chatting. After the boys had burnt off some energy, we drove a short way to the RSL.
The club itself was the usual type of club with a delicious menu. What set it apart was the lovely views over the lake.
We all had nice lunches and then decided to go for a drive around the beaches through Newcastle itself and then home.
We arranged to meet up again in the morning so we could have hot showers before we headed north to Glen Innes.
After such a big lunch, we did not need dinner. We repacked our bags with what we needed for the next couple of days, watched some TV and went to bed.
The family arrived at our apartment around 5:00pm. As we expected the boys are growing so fast. We had a lovely time at “Nana’s New Holiday House”
The boys were very surprised that the Easter Bunny had been early and left some presents here. The decision was made that he had dropped them off here early because they were not chocolate eggs, and he would have been too busy and not had room in his basket on Saturday. 😀😀
After dinner we chatted for a while until the kids got tired and it was time to take them home.
We had a comfortable nights sleep, and after breakfast we headed over to the family’s new home here in Newcastle. They have been in their new house for a couple of months now and have settled in well. The house is set on a hillside and is gorgeous, with lovely views over a green leafy suburb. They have natural bushland behind them which adds to the charm.
The boys were so excited to show us their rooms and the pool.
For lunch we headed to a lovely big local park for fish and chips, a kick of the footy and playing on the equipment. The council have done a great job with this park.
After lunch it was time to go to BMX. It has been a long time since I have been to BMX. Not since their dad was not too much older than T.
T made sure we knew exactly which outfit he was wearing so we would know which rider was him. I told him all we had to do was look at the front rider. 😀😀. He replied with “Not always”. but it mostly was, with T winning 3 out of 4 of his races, only narrowly coming second to another rider..
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Leading the pack right to the finish.
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Little H does so well. He is only 3 and cannot make it all the way around the track yet, and Dad has to run around after him to give him a bit of a push over some of the hills, but he loves it so much and comes back off the track with a HUGE grin on his face
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🙂 Poor Dad has just as much exercise as Little H
Little H nearly “did a Bradbury” when some of the others had a crash.
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While we were at BMX, I got a text message from the hotel saying that they had bad news. The hot water system for the resort had broken down d we would no longer have hot water and it was unlikely to be fixed for the duration of our stay. We were offered the option of staying and receiving compensation or they could help find alternative accommodation. We decided that the chances of getting alternative accommodation at this late date would be pretty unlikely, so we chose to stay. We will have a “bird bath” on Sunday morning and stop off at the family for a hot shower before we hit the road on Monday.
Back at home after a big day in the sun, we had dinner and were in bed fairly early looking forward to another day of fun tomorrow.
We both slept well but woke early ready for another day’s drive. It is exciting to be able to see the kids again. We are sure we will notice that they have grown again.
The news had said we might be in for a wet day today, so we had breakfast, packed up and were agin on the road at just after 7:00am on our way south.
We found a petrol station to top up with fuel. Our first stop was Port Macquarie. This is somewhere neither of us has been to before. We have decided we would like to spend some more time here and will definitely look at having a holiday here.
A bit further south we stopped at another roadside rest area for sandwiches and a cuppa
We had a good run, with not too much rain at all. and arrived at our accomodation at 3:00pm
We are here for the next 3 nights, so have unpacked and are waiting for the family to come over for dinner.
We woke up at our usual 5:30am, had breakfast and were on the road just after 7:00
Our destination today is the Charlesworth Bay Beach Resort in Coffs Harbour. We have approx 475kms travel I have booked a standard studio room as it is just a one night quick stopover.
We had a really good run south with quite light traffic most of the way. We only had some stop start traffic on the southern end of the Gold Coast.
I planned out first stop at a bakery I found just south of the Gold Coast. The plan was to buy a loaf of fresh bakery bread and perhaps something to eat and have a cup of tea overlooking the river.
We arrived in Chinderah at around 9:30, found the bakery and a parking spot. It looked very busy and when we got the shop itself, we saw that there was no bread left at all ☹️ and the pastry and cake cases were very empty. It certainly is a popular place. We decided to just have a cuppa by the river and keep heading south. We had to drive further up the road to turn around and in doing so, we found a great picnic spot.
We had a lovely 20 minutes or so before heading south again. A few minutes later, we needed a rest stop and exited the highway thinking we might have a short drive to find a service station. And it turned out, there was service station right off the exit. I realised that this particular service station was a Coles Express store and we were able to pick up some milk for our next day.
The next stop was to be Ballina, I wanted to find a bakery for bread to make sandwiches for lunch. A drive up the main street and we duly found a Brumby’s bakery and a loaf of nice fresh bread. A look at the map showed a park not far away, so we stopped and had our sandwiches and a cuppa
Back on the road heading south our next stop was a rest stop of the side of the highway. There are many of these rest areas on the Pacific Hwy and they were all being well used.
We reached our destination around 2:00pm, checked in and settled in for a quiet night before turning in early, ready for another 400km drive tomorrow.
