A view of a very windy Lake Macquarie from the camp site.

We had a bit of a change of mind this morning. We awoke to clear blue skies and a beautiful low sun over the river at Norm’s property. There was the occasional gust of wind though and as the morning passed the gusts became more fierce and more frequent.
After setting off we filled up, probably for the last time on this trip, just down the road and then headed south on the Pacific Highway (in case you hadn’t guessed !). We followed it to the end of the Pacific Highway where the A1 changes name from the Pacific Highway to the Sydney Freeway then followed that around Newcastle. There are a lot of familiar town names around here, Newcastle, Hexham, Stockton, Wallsend, Cardiff, Barnsley, Wakefield, Windermere and the town exit we were heading towards – Toronto !
We stopped at Raymond Terrace along the way for a coffee and Danish pastry and while we sat there watching the trees, advertising flags and anything that wasn’t bolted down blowing around in the very strong wind gusts we came to a decision. Whilst camping in a forest may give you more shelter from the wind, it also increases the risk of having a tree landing on you ! So, a new plan was devised to head to a camp site with an enclosed camp kitchen in a sheltered location and we chose a caravan park on the shores of Lake Macquarie, just south of Morrisset.
When we set up camp I removed the fly sheet as it’s not really needed unless it’s raining and makes a lot of noise in the wind. I’ve also made sure the nose of the Land Rover is pointing as square into the wind as possible so we’ve, figuratively speaking, battened down the hatches and are ready to ride the storm out. It’s forecast to die out by tomorrow morning and retain the clear blue skies, hopefully they’ve got it right !
Tomorrow we’ll head into northern Sydney to set up “base camp 1” for our final days in Australia. We’ll probably head there in a circuitous route as we have some shopping to do for stuff to take home in the north west of Sydney. There’s lots of snow in the higher areas but we’re not expecting that to effect us at this point…

For anyone that’s keeping count, we’ve now covered 15,638 miles on this little adventure or 25,167 km. I think the Land Rover may be overdue a service !