The Excellent Adventure - Onwards to Southwest Rocks
27-Dec-2010 - 29-Dec-2010
Leaving for Southwest Rocks
After stuffing ourselves silly over Christmas it was finally time to leave the comfort of Cameron’s family home in Port Macquarie and continue with the adventure up the coast. Our next stop was Southwest Rocks, located on the New South Wales coast about 40km North-East of Kempsey. We were a bit anxious about getting a campsite at Southwest Rocks as it was the one location on the adventure where we weren’t able to book a campsite. All the sites at the popular Arakoon camping grounds were booked out from many months ago and we were left to try and fight it out over one of the 20 sites available within the national parklands.
With this in mind, we started repairing, cleaning and packing our gear during the Christmas break so we were ready for a quick exit on the 27th.
We travelled to Southwest Rocks on the 27th with a cunning plan, we’d take as much gear as we could stuff in the 4WD and scout around the three possible camping grounds within the national park area. Since we didn’t know what kind of terrain we’d be crossing and where our campsite would be it seemed prudent to leave the boat and some of our non-essentials back in Port Macquarie.
We didn’t end up checking out any of the other possible camping grounds in the national park as we were suitably impressed with the first site. It was a beautiful and isolated spot (though importantly, we had 3G reception for work) just a few hundred meters from the beach. See for yourself!
From our campsite, to the beach (200m)
Unfortunately all the best spots at the camping ground were taken so we were left to setup on a thoroughfare between two other sites. We left Gabe there for the night (thanks Gabe) while Cam and I returned back to Port Macquarie to bring up the remaining gear and the boat. We were hoping that someone would move over the next couple of days before New Years and we’d be able to poach their spot.
Setting up camp at SW Rocks
Return to Southwest Rocks - Site 2
When Cam and I returned to South West Rocks the next day we were happy to find that Gabe was still alive and well. It also turned out that our plan worked and we found a empty campsite which was even closer to the beach. So we literally picked up our campsite and walked our tent and gazebo down to the new site (which provided the other campers some entertainment). Campsite 2 was a bit smaller but allowed us to park the boat in a way that gave us some privacy from any cars driving past. With New Years just a couple of days away, other campers were driving past quite regularly in the hope of getting a spot by the beach.
Site 2
With our campsite established, we settled in and got back to work. It was good to get some work done as we’d all been getting a bit anxious about our project over the Christmas break. Also, we were expecting a few friends to drop in on us for New Years so it was a good opportunity to get some distraction free work done. We even managed to have a teleconference with Jack back in Sydney that night after dinner. (Note our serious work faces)
Now all we had to do was get everything ready for for New Years Eve, Excellent Adventure style!
