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.
Finally, our holiday plans are coming back to some sort of normality post CoVid.
This year we are travelling south the Newcastle to visit the grandkids and then to Hobart to look at a house we are considering.
If you have followed my blog, you may remember we have bought a block of land overlooking the Derwent River in Tranmere. We have made the decision to sell that block and purchase a house on a slightly less steep block to cater better for M.
We have an offer on the block and are waiting for it to go unconditional. In the meantime, we have found a gorgeous house that we want to view before we sign our lives away 🙂
The decision to fly to Hobart came at the last minute, after we had already booked our roadtrip south. Rather than coming all the way back home from Newcastle, we are driving to Brisbane Airport and flying to Hobart.
The itinerary looks like this…
Thursday
6th
Accom
Coffs Harbour
Charlesworth Bay Beach Resort
Friday
7th
Newcastle
The Brighton Toronto
Saturday
8th
Sunday
9th
Monday
10th
Glen Innes
Glen Innes Motel
Tuesday
11th
Northgate
Comfort Inn Toombul Road
Wednesday
12th
Parking
Airport
Park’n’Fly
Flights
BNE>HBT
Virgin
Car
East Coast
Corolla
Accom
Howrah
Shoreline Hotel
Thursday
13th
Friday
14th
Saturday
15th
Sunday
16th
Flights
HBT> BNE
Virgin
We have packed the car and are ready to head off bright and early in the morning.
We were due to depart Hobart at 12:45pm, so we asked the hotel if we could have a later checkout than 10:00. We were told it was no problem to stay until 11:00
Finished packing, went across to Woolworths and bought a couple of rolls and some ham for our lunch, cleaned out the fridge and we were ready to go around 10:30.
Checking my emails, I got a lovely surprise with a message from Virgin announcing that we had been upgraded to Business Class for our flight home!! Often when you fly with Virgin, you get an option to “bid” on an upgrade. I don’t usually take it, but for some reason, I decided to bid $100 for both of us, and apparently, that was good enough!!
We arrived at the airport in plenty of time to return the car and check-in. Boarding the plane we were seated in the second row on either side of the aisle, so together but not 🙂 I had a nice lady from Nambour next to me and M had a man from Brisbane.
We were offered a glass of Champagne or juice and…well it would be rude to say no 😀 The flight also came with a meal which was Cheese and Crackers, Chicken and Broccoli with Mashed Potato in a tomato-y sauce and a pistachio cake for dessert. Very nice 🙂
We arrived back in Brisbane on time and collected our bags. We did not have to wait very long at all for the shuttle bus back to the carpark and we were on the road and heading home in no time.
A quick stop at Woolworths for milk, bread and a hot chicken for tea and we were home with some great memories.
We got up and had a shower, then tried to make a cup of tea and found we had no power? The room lights were working but no power.
I spoke to one of the cleaning ladies, who said “Oh no! Is yours out too?” Apparently somebody in one of the other rooms had done something and had tripped a couple of the rooms. I was able to take the kettle to one of the other rooms and at least get a cup of tea. A light breakfast of a vegemite sandwich, and we thought we would go for a drive out to see the homemaker centre near the airport.
There is everything we will need here for our home.
Heading back to the hotel, we decided to hop on a bus and travel into Hobart. I had seen an interesting place on Facebook a while ago called “In the Hanging Garden”. It is a lovely place and we could see that it would be a great place to have a drink with a group of friends.
Another place I had seen was “Aura” this is Hobart’s first rooftop bar and restaurant. The view was certainly stunning, but sadly there is a building in the way of the view of “our place” 🙁
We enjoyed a pot of tea and caught the bus back to the hotel.
Checking with the staff at the hotel, we were told that the power should be fixed. Sadly though we found it was not :(. We went back to the cafe and told the manager lady, who apologised profusely and said she would ring the electrician back and we could have our dinner in the cafe at no charge.
The electrician arrived soon after and managed to fix whatever the problem was. I decided to do a load of washing in the guest laundry. This meant we would have no washing to do when we got home.
We enjoyed our meals and had a quiet night ready for our departure tomorrow.
We awoke to another cloudy day with the threat of rain highly likely. We decided to not go far and run the risk of getting too wet.
We had another $50 meal voucher left from our Christmas present, so today seemed a good day to use it at the Bellerive Waterfront Hotel. We chose a table overlooking the marina and after reading through the menu, chose our meals.
For starters we thought we would try the Scallops Kilpatrick. They came in a serve of 5 scallops and while they were nice enough the kilpatrick sauce was not the best and it overpowered the scallops.
For the main course, I chose chicken breast filled with salami, spring onions, brie cheese and fresh basil with a garlic cream sauce and vege. M chose to have the chicken pasta. Both these meals were very nice.
We decided on desert as well and selected the lemon cheesecake and the banana split.
After lunch we drove back to the land and even with cloudy skies, it is still stunning 😀
Another sightseeing day today and a light breakfast as this was to be an “eating day” Firstly we headed to Richmond and the famous bakery.
I chose an apricot tart and hubby had a lamington with fresh cream.
The bakery precinct has a number of other shops including the Richmond Lolly Shop. While we did not buy anything, I did take this picture of the looooong counter.
After Richmond, we headed down the south east coast to Cygnet. Again we have been here many times, but it is such a pretty drive following Channel Hwy.
We found a lovely looking cafe for lunch. It is housed in the Old Bank with a beautiful glass conservatory. As we were looking at the menu, sadly it showed that the restaurant is an all-day breakfast menu. We were looking for “lunch” not breakfast, so we excused ourselves and found another cafe.
We checked the menu at The Red Velvet Lounge, and thought it looked good… It was a good decision, I would say it was close to the best meal I have had in a LOOOONG time. I chose the Pork Cutlet with Carrot Puree and Quinoa. It was so tender and juicy. Hubby chose a sirloin steak with bearnaise and fries and it was also cooked to perfection.
We did not need much for dinner that night and just snacked on “bits” from the fridge.
