Today we decided on a “country road trip” I did not particularly want to go to the Hunter Valley wine areas as we explored there a couple of years ago. (link to those posts) but rather have a look a the towns between Newcastle and the Hunter Valley – Cessnock, Kurri Kurri and Maitland were on the list.
We had briefly considered buying here when had made the decision to sell the block of land in Hobart. It would have been close to the kids and I thought it would be nice…BUT…then I found out that the Hunter Valley does not get cold !!!
I spoke to a friend of mine who lives in Scone and he said that the Hunter Valley wine region is mediterranean climate rather than the cool climate wine regions I am familiar with in Stanthorpe and Tasmania. So…that was a big NO to the Hunter Valley 😀😀😀
I did, however, find the information centre on the outskirts of the Hunter Valley that I decided to look at to see what I could find for the towns we wanted. link to info centre
Sadly, I did not find anywhere extra to go that I had already found, so off we went to Cessnock. I am not sure what I expected, but let’s just say we were glad we decided to stay with the idea of buying in Hobart
We were hoping to have a “Pub Lunch” but nothing was open. We looked a two pubs only to be told that the kitchens were closed the lunch. So that was Cessnock …. On to Kurri Kurri and again the town was underwhelming.
Surely Maitland would prove different… Nope.. everything closed. We did comment that it seemed unusual for a county town to have a narrow main street. Usually we have seen towns have very wide streets and have always wondered why founding fathers built huge wide streets in country areas and tight roads in the captial cities.
We decided to head back to Lake Macquarie where we knew places were open, being a bit more of a tourist area.
It worked…we had a lovely lunch at Pippi’s at Speers Point which is the next suburb around the lake from Warners Bay where we are staying. We were given a choice of where to sit, with one of the choices being a very flash round booth up on a pedestal. Mick said it was the penthouse of dining. I said it looked like a “Fat Tony” mob boss table.
Mick had a very nice Caesar Salad and I have roast Lamb loin and veges.
After lunch we drove along the lake toward our motel. As it was quieter and not much traffic, I was hoping I would get a carpark so we could investigate the many cafes and shops. There were not many, but turning left we found a large carpark behind all the shops. We wandered along and checked out a few menus for the next time we are here.
Back at the car, I noticed the Warners Bay Hotel. I had seen ads for it but had not seen where it was. We went in and found the dining room upstairs. It is really lovely, and we be certainly have a meal here at some stage.
We saw that the hotel had accommodation, so we asked if we were able to see a room. We could! We were shown two rooms, a family room and a standard Queen room. They were nowhere near as nice as the Esplanade Motel, but it is always good to look at options.
We popped into Coles and got McCain microwave dinners for tea, went back to the motel and had a quiet night before we checkout tomorrow.
We woke early this morning, had our showers and breakfast and went to the family. We had arranged to arrive at 7-30ish to see the boys. When we arrived C said the boys had done well and had slept in until nearly 5:30am. Of course Santa had been and the boys were super excited at their haul. Young Mr T was very excited to receive a new bike AND a motorbike. (among a heap of other presents) Little Mr H had also received heaps of gifts but was happy playing with a cheap bubble blowing kit.
We left the family around 10:30 as they were busy getting ready to go away for the week. Lots of hugs and cuddles as this was goodbye for now until we catch up again when they are coming to Brisbane for BMX in February.
We went back to the motel, had lunch and put on a load of washing in the guest laundry. Given that it was a lovely day, I was able to hang the washing on the clothesline rather than using the dryer.
After the washing was hung out, we drove into Newcastle city to scope out where to park for the tram that runs along the waterfront. We are planning on spending some time “playing” on the tram on Wednesday in between checkout time of the motel at 10:00am and our flight to Adelaide at 4:00pm.
I figured today being Christmas day it would be quiet on the roads. I was correct and we were able to park easily on the foreshore park.
We went for a walk and had a look at a couple of restaraunts where we might have lunch on Wednesday. While we were there, a HUGE bulk carrier was being led into the port by four tug boats.
Back to the motel, I checked the washing and just had to put some thick socks in the dryer, but the rest was all dry.
We went for a walk just up the road, as Mick had seen a community garden in a large park that he wanted me to see. It was a very impressive setup, but maybe most impressive was how clean and “unvandalised” (can that be a word?) I can’t say I have ever seen public toilets in a council park that do not need to be locked up.
After our walk, we made some dinner and settled in for a night of TV. We had finished dinner when we started to hear thunder. We were mildly worried that there may have been some hail in the storm and contemplated moving the hire car under cover, but decided that it would be OK. We did. ot get any hail, but the storm raged with LOTS of thinder and lightning for a few hours. One clap of thunder was right over the top of us and startled both of us.
Tomorrow we are planning a drive out to Cessnock and the Hunter Valley.
Christmas Eve is always a fun day when there are little kids involved. The boys were very excited there is now only ONE more sleep until Santa comes.
We had breakfast and were just tidying up the room before going to the kids for our Christmas lunch, when we got a message from M saying they were going to a local skate oark to burn off some energy. A very short while later, it started raining 😒🙁 so that stopped that plan.
Arriving for lunch, I helped with the final preparations and we sat down to a lovely lunch of ham, roast lamb and veges followed by pavlova.
We had a lovely day playing with the kids, they were excited because at 4:30-ish, Santa was planned to be coming up the street down the hill in a firetruck!
Sure enough around that time we could hear the sirens and we all walked down the road to see not one but two firetrucks coming. Santa was in the second truck The firemen and Santa waved and threw lollies to the kids. Of course there was mad scramble to collect as many as possible 😀
We made our way back to the motel and we will have a quiet night ready for the full on excitement of Christmas morning tomorrow.
Part 2 of yesterdays post… We had an uneventful flight from Brisbane although we were pushed back by 40 minutes as our incoming flight from Mackay was delayed, and in turn our flight would be late.
As I mentioned in the previous post, we spent the extra wait time in the Virgin lounge, so it was not a hardship 🙂 The plane we were on was painted up in special livery to celebebrate the 100th anniversary of the first flight between England and Australia in 1919. I found this article all about it..
Once we arrived, we collected our suitcases and our hire car and made the short drive to the motel. After we checked in and dropped off our bags, we went to catch up with the family and get “boy cuddles”
The plan for the afternoon was to do our “Santa Shopping” and C was taking the boys out and away from peeking while M finalised some “Santa construction”
The shopping centre is around the corner from the fmily’s house, and we changed our plans slightly and decided we would just do our grocery shopping and then do the Big W shopping in the morning.
As the motel does not have a full kitchen, I devised a quick and easy dinner of BBQ chicken and a pack on microwave fried rice and a satchet of honey mustard sauce. All I did was shred up a good handful of hot chook and microwaved the rice and sauce and mixed it all together in a bowl each. it was actually very nice 🙂
Dinner done and cleaned up, it was time for a bit ov TV and an early night. It had been a long day 🙂
Saturday 23rd December 2023
Of course we woke up early with NSW being on daylight saving time, it is an hour ahead. We had our showers and breakfast and headed back to the shops and Big W. We had done a look aroound at Big W at home so we knew roughly what we were buying, but we had decided it was much easier to shop down here than cart presents in our luggage.
I had bought a Big W gift card before we left as I get them at a discount and I knew we had a 10% off our shop as well and I determined to spend it all :). We got to the checkout and the young girl could not get the gift card to work at all :(. She did really try so hard. She scanned it multiple times. I closed and reoped the app to reload the barcode, she unpluged the scanner so it rebooted, and even tried entering the number in manually. it just would not work :(. She finally manged to grab a supervisor and explained that it would not work. Well…he tried scanning it and of course, it worked first time 🙂
We loaded all the gifts into the car and went back to the motel to wrap them all, before going back to the family to deliver them and help the boys put them all under the Christmas tree.
We had a lovely day of just “being’ with the family before heading back to the motel for another easy dinner of bbq chook and carbonara pasta, again done in the microwave.
We are having our big Christamas lunch/Dinner tomorrow as the family are going to leave for a few days at C’s family a couple of hours south on Christmas Day afternoon.
After a very busy year it is going to be a well deserved break this year. We are off to Newcastle for a few days to see the family, then on to Adelaide for 9 days.
Part 1:
Our flight leaves at 9:10 from Brisbane, so we set the alarm early, had a light breakfast and a cuppa and headed south.
The traffic was much lighter than I expected an we got to the airport with loads of time to spare. I checked the departures board only to find our plane has been delayed and it now not departing until 10:20.
We decided to use our lounge pass to wait and have some more breakfast/morning tea and avoid the noise and general “busy-ness” of the airport.
Our plan today is to check in to the motel, do some grocery shopping for essentials, and finish off the Christmas shopping for the boys. Lake Macquarie Square is a decent sized shopping centre not far from the motel and the family.
M & C are busy this evening getting last minute presents sorted for Christmas, so we have arranged for a quick visit this afternoon and we will catch up more tomorrow.
Our flight did not leave Newcastle until 12:15pm so we were able to have a slow start to the day.
I had packed most of our things the night before, so really needed to do not much more than have a shower, breakfast and relax.
We checked out at 8:30 and double checked our reservation was correct when we are back at Christmas time. We then headed to the family to say a final goodbye to the kids and leave them with the little bit of grocery items we had left over.
An uneventful drive back to the airport, dropped the car off and waited for our flight. We were on the same kind of plane as our first flight. We departed on time and arrived at Brisbane airport at 12:30pm Brisbane time.
Back to the car, and another uneventful drive home arriving at about 2:30pm
We had run the fridge right down before we left so we needed to go shopping, so we did a big shop while we had the time.
We got home, put the groceries away, did a load of washing, had dinner and crashed into bed early 🙂 We had a lovely trip and now it is time to look forward to our next trip…
the next trip away will be at the end of December and we have planned to be back in Newcastle to see the family for a couple of days and then we are off to Adelaide for 9 days.
