Hitting the road and enjoying some surf

Lane Cove Park camp site

After the last week of manic work moving out of my flat and handing keys back we were exhausted, and planned to spend a couple of days recuperating and testing the camping gear at some nearby camp site in Sydney. We got warned away from a lovely camp site down near Berowra Waters because of a mosquito plague so Tony did some hunting online and found a rather up market camp site right in the middle of Lane Cove Park (Lane Cove park is only about 7km from Sydney centre) which was rather expensive but we had no other options so we booked in 2 nights. We rocked up a bit late after giving the keys back and making our way in our loaded Cruiser to Lane Cove but luckily the nice lady on reception stayed back to wait for us. Our first night camping and on the road, both of us glad to have last week behind us and be rolling finally.

At night it gave me a chance to test out some of the LED lighting which is powered from the vehicle 12 volt batteries. It has dual batteries with a cut over switch which should isolate the second battery for starting so you don't flatten both batteries when camping. However, it appears I managed to flatten both batteries on our first night playing around with the inverter... much to Tony's amusements and heckles I had the battery recharged from a mains outlet by the morning.... Well you have to test the limits of any new system

After 2 days we headed on the road out of Sydney up the Pacific Highway north. It was good to leave Lane Cove as both of us had been ravished by mozzies over two nights, it appears that mosquito plague was all over Sydney! Ah the joys of camping coming flooding back as we itched our way up the east coast.

Seal Rocks

Tony had done some superb research and found what promised to be a beautiful secluded beach camping site at Seal Rocks which is just past Newcastle near Forster, about 3.5 hours driving from Sydney. The area was touted as one of New South Wales' top 10 most beautiful camping sites. They where not wrong it was fabulous, within a nature reserve, quiet and right on the beach. The beach was mostly empty apart from some other intrepid campers, fisherman and of course Surfers as this was an excellent surf beach. We arrived quite late around 7pm when the sun was going down and we drove right to into the car park at Seal Rocks and noticed another guy camping so decided to pitch camp. The car park and our camping site was within a stones throw of the surf, and the surf is loud with the huge Pacific waves crashing on the beach. At night it felt like you where in the surf... sleeping with the sound of sea and surf in your ear is a marvellous experience.

We spent 2 nights at Seal Rocks enjoying the surf and beauty of the spot. It was also a relief not to have any mozzies around so we could lick our wounds and recover, the salt water does marvels for healing skin wounds and bites.

At night we had gourmet cooking thanks mainly to the extensive kitchen we brought with us. This dinner was chops with Caesar salad and apple source yummy!

Point Polmer surf beach

The first target to reach from our overall trip plan was Byron Bay which sits on the coast right at the top of New South Wales just before the Queensland border. It was still a good drive (300 miles) to Byron so we decided to break the journey up with another secluded beach camp on the way. We heard about Point Plomer from Shane the gas pipeline worker who was camped up next to us enjoying some fishing and wilderness on his week off work. He enjoys finding quiet wilderness fishing spots and has explored most of the coast ahead of us so recommended we stopped at Point Plomer about 120 miles up the coast.

It was a good drive of about 3 hours to Point Plomer which went smoothly. We encountered our first unsealed gravel road approaching Point Plomer which is at the end of a long and very rough gravel road which makes you glad your in a Landcruiser. Then we arrived at the camp site and beach.

We spent a rather slow relaxing 2 nights at the camp site enjoying the beach and surf during the day. The sun was hot and we over did it on the beach a bit resulting in some burned skin on both of us.

Time to pack up and hit the road again, next stop Byron Bay or rather Lennox Head which is just before Byron as we plan to stay in a camp site I know which is situated right next to a Tea Tree lake that you can swim in.