The Great Aussie Road Trip

[Forewarning, this is a long post with lots of pictures... I may have gone overboard]

Since there were no classes the week after Easter, I decided I would take advantage of this time off to do a bit of travelling.
Surfing + Experiencing Australia - anything expensive (I don't have loads of spending $) = ROAD TRIP!
I called up George and Keegan, and we decided to take a road trip to explore and surf the New South Wales Coastline. Although, that's the only thing we figured out. Plans kept changing. At first I was going to fly up to the Gold Coast, and we we're going to drive back south. Then I found out it would save me $100 on my flight if they drove to Newcastle first and then we drove back north to Gold Coast. So they we're going to come down right after Easter, but George cut his foot while jumping off some rocks to go surf, and Keegan got stitches in his arm after getting cut my his surfboard fins. They ended up arriving Tuesday evening.

Sunset in Newcastle

On Wednesday we hung out at my place in Newcastle staying out of the crazy strong rain and wind for the day. The guys loved my place; very spacious compared to their place. George and I did go for a surf that afternoon, but not for long.

Keegan took this picture while G and I were surfing. That's the Merewether surf club on the right.

So on Thursday we finally began our journey. You can follow along with the pictures and narration on the:
Map of Our Journey.

Armed with the advice of my friend Hobbit and The Surfer's Travel Guide he lent me, we set out for Seal Rocks. Along the way, we admired the landscape of this foreign land with the mountains on the horizon and all the green trees.

Since they both bought the car, I rode backseat the entire trip. Not always bad though because if I organized it right, I could lie back nicely.

Big eucalyptus tree (I think, correct me if I'm wrong)

The landscape:

We turned off onto The Lakes Way, a cool and scenic drive, to go out to Seal Rocks, Boomerang Beach, etc.

Then we turned off onto this dirt road to get out to Seal Rocks. First but certainly not the last dirt road we took.

When we stopped at Seal Rocks, we didn't find any good waves but we did find the most amazing views and beautiful beaches. Clearly an great vacation spot!

Seal Rocks

The view to the north from Seal Rocks: more headlands that we shall explore!

A beautiful secluded beach at Seal Rocks. Oh and, Justin, we should be on that tall ship out in the cove!

Seal Rocks was really cool and all, but we after some waves, so we continued North. In an attempt to find a beach just north of Seals Rocks, we ran into a dead end at a lake where the ocean should have been. I don't mean we found the ocean, but it looked like a lake (like the Atlantic often does in Charleston). Literally, there was a lake standing in between us and the ocean. It was odd. We could even see the narrow inlet where the lake met the ocean, but we could see no one of driving there. Piling back into the Stallion, we drove to Boomerang Beach, which Hobbit estimated would be good based on the present swell. He was SO RIGHT!

There was a bit of a right hand point break on this side of the beach, which is where we surfed this afternoon.

As you can see, really good waves!

We paddled out along side these rocks here where there was a current pulling us out to the lineup, much like a moving sidewalk in an airport.

Clean conditions and overhead waves, yes please! There is a person about to duckdive under that wave, so if you look closely, you can get a gauge of the size of the waves. Oh and I forgot to mention: so uncrowded! Awesome!

View of the rest of Boomerang Beach. Besides the right hand point break, there was a good beach break in the middle, and if the swell were coming from the other direction, then the left hand point break, which can be seen at the end of the beach, would be working.

 We got out of the water before the sun went, so that we could set up camp before dark. Over the entire trip, we looked for and eventually found free places to camp each night. Designated campgrounds were lame and to be avoided because they often charged money, prohibited fires, and had other people and rules. So, we turned off on dirt roads, side streets, etc. trying to find places out of sight and good for camping. There were a few ironic occasions when we left somewhere because we couldn't find a place to a camp, only campgrounds.
Now before you worry or judge us as reckless lowlifes, we saw other people camping on the beach, George had previously camped at one of our destinations, and 2 out of the 3 nights there were civilians around in the morning or evening who paid absolutely no attention to us. Oh and we never got caught :)

While looking for camp on night #1, we pulled over to admire the sun setting over this lake. This is one of Keegan's pictures.

I took this picture of the same sunset, and it's interesting how different the pictures look. I can't say how Keegan took his, but my picture was taken on the sunset/sunrise scene setting.

Laughing at how homeless we must have looked became a running joke for the trip. Instead of sleeping bags, we pulled the board socks off our surfboards and slept in them. We had 2 ground pads and a small 2 person tent for 3 people. We practically lived on PB&J's. We showered, brushed our teeth, and filled up our water jugs in the outdoor public showers at beach accesses, which were nothing more than a shower head held up by a long piece of lumber. And most obviously, we were living out of a car. Let the homeless hobo activities begin:

I cooked my instant noodles and potatoes on this little camp stove right next to the car.

George's PB&J dinner. Keegan (not pictured) ate precooked spaghetti that he cooked at my place before we left.

Campground #1. While still on the sand, we tucked our tent up close to the rocks, so the tent and the fire could not be seen from the road. A practical and scenic campground.

George emerging from the tent for the first time. We had the bin filled with water next to the tent, so that we could remove the sand from our feet before getting in the tent. However, before we filled up the bin, the rain forced us to flea into the tent with sandy feet. It also looks like Keegan left his sweatshirt on top of the tent all night to collect the rain. mistake!

Sunrise after our first night camping

This lady in the morning gave a little scare. She was walking straight at us, and we thought she was going to tell us to get lost. Instead she nodded, touched the tip of the rock, and turned right around. She must have measured the distance previously, or something, because all morning she jogged along the length of the beach, each time touching the edge of the rock and turning around.

Kookaburra hanging out right above our tent

That morning we surfed Boomerang Beach again. A bit smaller but still offshore winds and great conditions.

 

 

We decided to go look for more waves farther north.

Here Bum Status is in full effect. We would later have wetsuits, boardshorts, and towels hanging on the doors and the wooden fence while we made PB&J's, cracked jokes, and talked about where we wanted to go next.

A place for everything and everything in it's place...right?

Now following the surfing guide book to spots that sounded good, we packed up and left Boomerang Beach. Noticing this cool dirt road, it wouldn't be much of an adventure if we didn't see where it led.

Cool dirt road, complete with roller coaster hills and blind turns

It led to the ocean...

...and a long beach with a cool view of the headlands we had just explored.

Since there weren't many supermarkets along the route we were taking, a stop at an ALDI (cheap grocery store that George is obbessed with) was crucial to stock up on food and supplies while we had the chance. This store accentuated our newfound vagabond lifestyle. In an effort to cut as many costs as possible, ALDI's just put their products on the shelves in the shipping boxes they arrived in. ALDI's don't carry any name brands, nor do they bag your groceries or even provide bags. You are more than welcome to take an empty box off the self and fill it with your own groceries, which is exactly what we did.
Since George and Keegan don't have a freezer in their apartment (although I am hesitant to call it that since it more closely resembles a hotel room or a dorm room), icecream is a rare luxury. Treating ourselves, we split a box of icecream popsicles and ate them all right there in the front of the store, in the same manner a chain smoker would smoke a pack of cigarrettes, except that the chain smoker would have to do that outside the store. There were 2 kids staring at us with envy I'm sure, either that or fear. Now since I can't recall our attire, I will do my best to assign staticstics. Of the three of us going into the store:
1 in 3 may have been barefoot,
3 in 3 shirts smelled like campfire,
2 in 3 shirts had dirt stains,
2.5 in 3 were wearing boardshorts (George may have been in his permantly stained jeans),
and of those boardshorts, 2 in 3 were dry,
0 in 3 were wearing socks or underwear,
2 in 3 were wearing hats to contain long unkept hair (we buzzed George's hair before leaving Newcastle),
2 in 3 had showered with soap within the last 24 hours (I'm looking at you, Keegan),
and of course 0 in 3 cares were given to our appearance.

We stopped to check the North Wall, as the surf spot is called, in Tuncurry, and while we didn't find quality waves, we did find this cool beach inside the harbor enclosed by shark nets (as evidenced by the bouys in this picture).

All fueled up and ready to go, we proceeded out to South West Rocks.

Little Bay. At first we were so focused on checking the waves, that we didn't notice all the kangaroos just outside our window.

We encountered our first wild kangaroos! Keegan is going to get a better look at the Joey in that one's pouch.

There are lot's of public cooktops, and we stopped to cook sausages on a few  occasions. On the right you can see my attempt to boil water, fortunately I only needed hot water to cook my instant noodles.

Campfire on night #2. George and Keegan had some good pyromaniac fun, but I was burned out and went to bed early each night.

Campground #2 in a eucalyptus forest. Keegan fell off the cooler right as I took this cooler, and I can't believe the coincidence! Hilarious.

After a good night sleep in the forest, we rocked up to a magical strip of land pointing into the Tasman Sea. Angourie it's named. With one glance you can look at the right hand point break and a left hand point. George was relaying stories of the Seckinger boys - correction: men - surfing both point breaks in one day with epic conditions. While the swell was dying and neither the waves nor the conditions were fabulous, we still had great fun surfing here all day. On more than one occasion, I was riding a wave over shallow rocks, which I could see through the clear water. kinda spooky. 

Isn't it beautiful :, ) 

It's kinda funny: you'd paddle straight out (down in the right corner of this picture) a little ways and then take a hard right turn and paddle out along side the shore. Nothing like paddling out at a beach break.

I didn't get a picture of a good wave, but the average wave was about chest high, and the sets rolling through were head high + (correct me if I'm wrong and your reading this, Keegan or George).

Preserving the magic. Oh and Keegan's double hood wins hobo outfit of the trip.

More wild Kangas at Angourie Surfing Reserve. Big ones, too! Somehow managed to get a picture of him mid-hop. 

You can see the long wall on the waves. So Much Fun! 

George taking a look at the left point break and the beach break

Cool little spot to jump off the rocks into these pools right near the ocean. We didn't actually jump off the rocks. Too high up....haha yea right. Children weren't afraid. We back out surfing instead.

Rock pool on the coastline. A lot of the coastline is rocky, and every time I see these rock pools I dream of having my own secluded rock pool that I would stock with corals and fish like my own private snorkeling pond.

Driving a little ways north of Angourie, we camped at this spot that George knew of and had previously camped at.

Again with the coincidental timing. When I took this picture I didn't know Keegan was poking his head out. It wasn't until I later looked at the picture did I realize. The tent was on some thick grass this night, so it was pretty comfortable.

Situated in front of a cliff extending outwards from the beaches on either side, this spot was pretty unique and really cool. All night there were people fishing off these rocks.

Carvings on the cliff above campsite #3.

Nights 2 & 3 George opted to sleep in the car, which made the tent much more comfortable. You can see the board sock sleeping bag in action. 

George and I checking Boulder Beach

Blurry picture of the waves at Boulder Beach.

This is where we paddled out, that little strip of sand between the rocks and the cliff.

By this point in the trip, we were a bit tired of taking pictures and just went out surfing. This is Boulder Beach, where we surfed Sunday morning (the last day). The waves were still really fun, about chest to head high and really clean. We actually paddled down more towards the beach break. Funny, this was pretty much the first time I got to go left on the road trip, since we mostly surfed right point breaks and even the beach breaks were breaking better going right.

Lennox Head. We checked it, but it didn't look so great, but if you read the writing you'll see that it's a famous spot.

Last surf session: back up near Gold Coast we surfed Duranbah. Pretty fun, but the smallest waves of the trip.

Well, we made it back to Gold Coast safely. No car trouble, thankfully. Even though the pictures may not show it, but it rained at least once each day and every night. To George and Keegan's surprise and my relief, the tent that came with the car had a rain fly.
I had one more night sleeping on camping mats and in my board sock on George and Keegan's floor. Then I flew back to Newcastle. GREAT TRIP! I don't if I mentioned it, but I had a lot of fun on this trip. The coastline is so beautiful, exotic to me, and diverse with all the different rock outcroppings, cliffs, and headlands. I seriously could live here forever if I had family here, but it feels empty and lacking without my family.

Waiting at a bus stop on my way to the airport. Thankfully my board survived the flight in the day bag whose zipper is broken, so it's held closed with athletic tape and my surfboard leash.

I finished writing this blog around 1:00am, so by the end of this blog post I feel similar to how I felt by the end of this trip: tired, out of steam, and ready for a good night sleep in a real bed. On that note, good night and thanks for reading!

Next up: Australian Ultimate Championships aka Nationals!





P.S. We pulled up next to this at a stop light, and I maintain that it's the creepiest thing I have seen in Australia, and one of the creepiest things I have ever seen. To see it hanging there staring at me with rain dripping down the window startled me to say the least. and there were no children in that car....