We have spent the last couple of days with Al’s family at a holiday village at Hastings Point on the far north coast of New South Wales. The weather was spectacular, and it was great to be able to catch up with everyone and see how much all of the kids have grown.

I had to work a bit, so I didn’t get to spend as much time at the beach as eveyone else, but I managed to spend a decent amount of time with eveyone and relax a bit.

Here are some photos…

Sheldon (partially submerged), Chris (cousin) and Aiden taking advantage of the pool at near our unit.

Our unit at the holiday village. It was a really nice little self-contained place with plenty of room for us to spread out.

Here are all the cousins on the George side of the family from the oldest on the left to the youngest on the right… Mel, Joel, Caitly, Aiden, Olivia, Sheldon and Chris. They had a ball running around together and getting to know each other again.

The boys love the beach.

I wasn’t intending to get wet, but I had to cross the creek to get back to the car, and it was deeper than I had anticipated…it was FREEZING.

We were also lucky enough to spot some whales playing off the headland …. there was also an F-111 doing low fly-bys, but we didn’t manage to get a photo of that. It was very cool.

Stay tuned for photos from Toowoomba tomorrow. (It’s blowing a gale here tonight, and it’s cold…feels like home LOL)

Michelle

We arrived at the Mediterranean Hotel at Crescent Head (near Kempsey) at about midnight ont he first night - not a bad little place. Clean and tidy. The next morning we drove through the subtropical dairy country along the Macleay River. So green and lush!

It has been a long while since I’ve seen such wonderful green grass! There were all sorts of run down old decaying barns and houses along the road…unfortunatley I didn’t manage to get a photo of any…this one was taken out the window while we were driving along LOL.

We don’t often catch a nice photo of Aiden, but Al caught a great one when we stopped at a lookout to appreciate the view.

We also took time to go and visit a block of land that we bought in northern NSW at a very poetically named place called Upper Fine Flower where we think we might retire (a loooong way down the track ) I was really pleased with how green it is too. It was a bit of a surprise to see someone was taking advantage of us not living nearby and letting their horses eat our feed…will have to do some detective work to track them down.

Here’s my man.

The weather up here is spectacular…such a nice change from the Canberra winter.

Michelle

Broadband is surprisingly patchy where we are at the moment and I haven’t had the opportunity to post photos etc of out adventures..however…I have learned a couple of things in the last  couple of days:

1. I get car sick when I try to write/type and the road is hilly and windey (who knew?? I never get car sick!)…and

2. It’s not fun when Al loses his backpack containting his wallet/credit card/drovers licence! Actually we’re not sure if it was lost or stolen…either way it’s a monumental pain in the aaaaa..butt!

Viva La adventure!!

Michelle

We managed to get away from Canberra by 2pm…Al was happy to be able to leave work early and the boys enjoyed telling all their friends that they were finishing school at lunch time. I, on the other hand, enjoyed my last solitary morning for two and a half weeks.

All packed and ready to go…the boys were installed in the backseat with their books, Lego and the PS2 long before we were actually ready to go.

We did about 750 kms today…10 hours in the car with a break for dinner….I am really looking forward to the pillow

Well my faithful readers…tomorrow is the start of Road Trip ’08. I’ve done my last couple of hours of face to face work with my client (I’ll have some reports to write on the road..but that’s cool. I have a super nerdy little laptop table to use in the car LOL), and now I need to get my head around packing. My big white board is full with six different packing lists and I’m starting to wonder how it’s all going to jigsaw into the car .

Packing for me is fine…that’s the easy part. Clothes, computer and my sketchbooks. Simple. Packing for the little boys is another story, particularly since their idea of putting their laundry away involves shoving stuff wherever it fits…I could get them to find stuff I suppose, but they don’t get the whole minimalist packing thing. As for the older boy…he can definitely pack his own stuff

I plan to post a little something every day, well as much as I can anyway…who knows if my broadband connection will stand the test of the Australian boonies…should be right up the coast. Here’s a tentative plan of our trip. (“A” is the start point and I’m betting that the “E” marker will move down to Toowoomba) We’ll do somewhere between four and five thousand kilometres in the time we’ll be away. Yikes!

See you on the road peoples!

Michelle