After the dash from Esperance in the wild winds we finished up at Albany and the Big 4 caravan park right on Middleton Beach.

Pic: Middleton Beach

This is a brilliant location and a great park with heaps of facilities, but it was also the most expensive park we have stayed in over the trip at $51.00/night. We have discovered now that after some very good deals in Qld and NSW we tend to think that anything over $30.00 is a ‘bit steep’! It’s probably not, but we tend to be hunting out the bargains rather than just accepting that ‘its just what it costs’.

I love Albany. Its a beautiful place and the whole environment is sensational, but the weather… well, lets just say that in my last few holidays to this area (in December) we have had to start wood fires to keep warm. I am starting to lose a bit of faith…

While there we enjoyed lunch with the Vanderwals, dinner with the Sephto’s – hard to believe they were our old ‘youth group kids’, a morning surf at Nannarup Point and the obligatory visit to Toyworld. (Danelle and kids spent an hour in there while I read the paper.) Sadly my memory of my only surf in Albany was of uglylocals who felt it necessary to point out that I was a visitor and that they had lived there for 40 years… what the?…

Pic: camped at Ray’s place

We stayed 2 nights here before we observed the weather turning really ugly again. High winds and heavy rain were on their way… again… We had hoped to duck across to Cosy Corner, just 25 kms away, where there is a great free campsite, but given we would simply be stuck indoors waiting for rain to ease, we rang my friend Ray and teed up to stay at his place over in Denmark. He has a fantastic property sheltered well away from the wind and we had access to the house if the storms did become unmanageable. In the end we stayed in the camper both nights and although there was plenty of rain we stayed pretty snug.

Pic: Crazy country folks!

By contrast Ray and friends Paul and Abigail decided to use the first night as preparation for their Holland Track adventure and slept outdoors in their swags. I thought we were pushing it to be out in the camper, but these guys simply parked on the ground and stayed outside for the night in these tiny canvas coccoons.

We had a great time with these guys and were intending to head on from Denmark to Parry Beach. At $14.00 / night for the family and with a great surf beach right there I was getting excited. But the weather prognosis just kept on getting worse, so on Monday morning we said ‘stuff it’ and hopped in the car and drove to Busso where there at least looked to be some chance of seeing the sun.

Pic: view from Parrys campsite

We will keep Cosy Corner and Parrys as places to venture back to. Parrys especially looked nice with sheltered campsites and good facilities right on the beach. I understand it gets really busy in holidays, but maybe we will be able to hit it outside of them.

So I’m a tad disappointed…

I had hoped to invest a couple of weeks in seeing the great south – Bremer, Albany, Denmark, Walpole and surfing myself silly, but the ugly WA weather simply got the better of us.

We had considered packing up the whole show and heading for Kalbarri, but given that wind is our greatest enemy we decided that it wouldn’t be that smart to head for one of the windiest parts of the whole WA coast.

It looks like we will be home in around 12 days now and the adventure is coming to an end. I think we are all pretty much ready and yet at the same time a bit frustrated that we haven’t been able to enjoy some warmth. But then I’ve heard that this has been typ[ical of WA for the last 6 months and this is possibly the best 6 months we could have chosen to get out of there!

After leaving Eucla we headed on thru to Fraser Range Station, a really nice campground just 100km out of Norseman and definitely worth the $25.00 it cost to stay. There are plenty of barren, gravelly camp sites in this stretch, so to find a green and attractive place with good facilities was a bonus. If you’re doing the trip then mark it on your map as well worth a visit. It was an old sheep station and many of the original buildings have been restored and are in use today.

Along the way we managed to spend a rainy & cold but fun, half hour at Madura Pass with Kevin & Shelly Black who were heading in the opposite direction. We spotted each other 10ks out of Madura and Kev turned and caught us while we were re-fueling. It was good to see these guys who are just starting their trip – and we sure hope they encounter some better weather.

After Fraser Range we hit the road and drove on thru to Esperance, one of the places we were hanging to see again. It’s probably 13 years since Danelle and I were last there and we had very fond memories of that trip. We were also hooking up with our good friends Graeme and Sharon Mason who were driving down from Narrogin for the weekend, so we were looking forward to that as well.

Victoria has the Great Ocean Rd and Esperance has the Great Ocean ‘Drive’. The Victorian experience is definitely head and shoulders the best, but the ‘drive at Esperance is still pretty damn good. The Esperance beaches have some of the whitest sand and bluest water you will see anywhere. The surf was pretty average while we there and the only time we hit the water was at Twilight Beach where we tried teaching the kids to surf. It was fun, but very cold.

We stayed at the Seafront Tourist Park a decent enough campground, but we definitely noticed the school holiday crowds. Suddenly there were lots of people on either side of us and noise early in the morning… It felt busy… and congested…Weird…

Claustrophic…

Sadly our return to WA has been met with crappy weather almost from the time we crossed the border. When you’re camping, days seem looooong when the weather is lousy and when you’re waking up before 6am again then they seem even longer. We loved hanging with our friends at Esperance but on Monday they went home and we headed out to Cape Le Grand. Before the trip started this camp-ground was on my ‘do not miss’ list as I find that particular area so beautiful.

There’s no question that Cape le Grand campground is one of the best National park campsites around. For $9.00/adult/night and $2.00/kid you get a private camp area, toilets and hot showers (solar) as well as a camp kitchen and a water supply. All of this is right on one of the most beautiful beaches you can imagine. We rolled in, set up and were hoping to spend 3 nights there, but the wind got the better of us… On Monday the wind blew pretty hard and apart from making it a little unpleasant we spent the evening listening to the camper clatter and shake, before it eventually calmed.

Tuesday morning it was still blowing hard and getting stronger. We spent Tuesday Am visiting the bays in the area and came home to play on the beach. The beach was lined with perfect little A frame beachbreak peaks, but it was just too small to get any decent momentum on. I tried on both days… and had I brought the 8’8” mal I probably would have been ok, but the 7’1” just didn’t have the float. The offshore was blowing a gale and it was icy out there even with the sun out.

When we got in from the surf the wind had increased and the weather report suggested it wouldn’t ease till after midnight. So at 3pm we made a snap decision to pack up and head for calmer territory. The plan was simply to drive until the wind dropped. We had been tossing up heading north of Perth and spending the last couple of weeks in Kalbarri or Geraldton, but despite these places being warmer they are also infamous for wind.

So in the toss up between wind and cold the ‘cold’ won. We figured its more pleasant to camp when its cool than when its blowing a gale, although I’ll admit that neither is a very desirable option. We had hoped to come home and spend a nice few weeks in some of our favourite places in the south of WA, but the weather means we are currently enduring a bit more than enjoying.

We finished up at a roadside stop in Munglinup next to the roadhouse where a large group of nomads were partying with the country music/karaoke cranked to the max. Despite the bad taste in music they were harmless enough and went to sleep at 9.30. The wind had died and we actually enjoyed a really good sleep before the road train pulled in next to us at 6.30 cranked his air brakes and left his diesel motor running while he took a leak!

So with grey skies setting the backdrop, we hit the road again, this time headed for Bremer Bay. I had been really looking forward to visiting this place as I’d heard so much good stuff about it and seen pictures of the beaches. But I was nursing what felt like a hangover (it wasn’t) and felt pretty weary, so my own enthusiasm was on the wane. The grey clouds and kids wishing ‘we could just go home’ (again) didn’t help my energy levels.

As we arrived the motor on the Patrol was running hot and we needed to get some water into it asap, only our second mechanical issue in the 21000 km. We parked by the beach where I did a quick inspection and discovered that the molded plastic fitting coming out of the radiator tank and going into the top hose had cracked and the hose simply pulled off. It isn’t good to be able to pull your top radiator hose off and I was pretty worried by what I saw.

It had obviously been leaking as we had been travelling. A piece of the radiator pipe remained in the hose and it was clear that it had broken and we no longer had the same length of pipe to connect back on to. I refitted the hose as best I could to the remaining piece of pipe, clamped it tight, refilled with water and drove to the caravan park as it was past lunch time and we were all feeling a little narky from hunger and me especially so with car dramas now front and centre.

A few phone calls to Albany revealed that because it was a molded fitting there was of course no way to repair it. A new ‘tank’ cost $400.00 fitted or a whole new radiator $700.00. So it looks like she’ll be getting a new radiator…

After realizing we weren’t in as much trouble as I first thought, I left the family at home and hit the road to find some surf. Native Dog Beach and Blossoms looked like the best options, but a quick check of both didn’t bring much excitement. Blossoms was tiny and Native Dog was messy and not very appealing. It was one of those days where if there had been another bloke present we would have paddled out just for the hell of it, but I just wasn’t in the mood and messy slop couldn’t entice me out.

I came back to the campsite to discover our immediate neighbours at the campsite are Tim & Charlene Prosser from Katanning, a couple of friends, so we enjoyed catching up with them before darkness hit and it was time to make dinner and bath kids.

Today we are in Albany staying at the Big 4 on Middleton Beach, a real 5 star affair and the kids are off watching a movie in the kids club. I am vegging in the camper and Danelle is doing the op shops… again…

We’ll drop the car in tomorrow and then take it a day at a time as there seems to be a pretty strong cold front coming thru on the weekend and we may get blown away again!

Cactus is one of those places that occupies a unique space in Aussie surf legend. Its reputation is as a gnarly, shark infested desert wave where only the hardy or foolish dare to go. I have now done 4 cross country trips, but the previous 3 were either with non-surfers or were done on a deadline, so in 35 years of surfing I have never ventured down to even look at Cactus.

However at 45 years old the opportunity finally presented itself to make my pilgrimage to this place and see if it lives up to its reputation. You couldn’t pass that up could you? After missing surf in Victoria I was ready to hit the water again so on Sunday we drove from Ceduna to Penong and then down the 21km track to the bush campsite right by the beach.

Cactus used to be a farm but now is an area totally dedicated to surfers and is owned by film director Paul Witzig. The camp itself is brilliant! Its right on the water, there are numerous little camp areas where you can hang with the crowds or just tuck yourself away and it only costs $8.50/night for adults with kids under 12 free. We loved being back in the rougher parts of the world again and instantly got back in the groove of bush camping.

The wild weather of the previous few days had me worried that the waves would be humungous, but when we arrived the swell was pretty small. When we arrived there was a light onshore blowing. All 3 breaks had waves but there was no one out. That made me wonder more… is there something I don’t know about?… There were probably 15 camps set up but everyone was either kicking back or down town. I wasn’t about to venture out alone when there was no one to be seen so I waited a while to chat with some folks about the waves.

The first bloke I met was Laurie a bloke in his 60’s who had lived in Penong since 1969. He had come for the surf and stayed. Literally. There isn’t much else to see in Penong and it’d be a hell of a place to live in the heat of summer.

He gave me the ‘tour’ of the 3 waves:

‘Cactus’ itself is the most mellow of the 3 waves on offer. It was small – waist to head high tops.

‘Castles’ was bigger but messy and breaking a long way out. It reformed on the inside but apparently has a very strong rip so it’s a hard paddle.

‘Caves’ was the furthest west and was the pick of the waves. A big barreling right hander that gets heavily surfed and is heavily localized. I made a mental note to not even bother with this one.

On Sunday we just went for a long walk around the headland and checked out the wild coastline. There were some very very heavy waves breaking out there and no one in sight. I didn’t bother surfing on Sunday, but the next day was looking good with offshores and clear skies.

There was a crew out at Caves early, but at 6ft I wasn’t that keen. Cactus was only 2-3ft but there was no one out at all, so I decided to become shark bait for the day. Strangely I have no great fear when it comes to sharks. Perhaps it’s just my rational mind, but I just figure that if I were going to worry about anything then Queensland drivers would surely rate a higher mention than sharks when it comes to personal danger… The rate of shark attack is so small to be negligible so that is never a deterrent to surfing alone, which I have done heaps of times on this trip.

Cactus wasn’t the best wave I’ve ever had, but that was more because of the strong winds that made it hard to catch. Still when you got a wave it was excellent – long fast breaking walls were great to get moving on.

In the afternoon I headed out to Castle’s again on my own. It looked good so I figured I’d just battle the rip to get some empty waves. It was very good. Long waves meant long paddles back out though, so after an hour and a bit I was pretty tired. I figured that two surfs in one days was enough for an old bloke and headed in to have a nanna nap.

That evening about an hour before sunset we sat watching perfect unridden waves roll thru at Cactus. Everyone was surfed out and no one could be bothered heading out. How often does that happen?…

The next day we woke to blustering 40 knot winds and decided to shut up shop and move on. Mission accomplished and I certainly hope that I’ll be able to do it again when we do this trip again in a few years time. However next time we will attempt to get here outside of SA school holidays.

In case you hadn’t realized I’m not much into crowds…

(Pictures are on Facebook as this connection is way too slow to upload)

Just a trip update for those who are interested…

After leaving Melbourne we headed south to McCrae – Phil McCredden’s place, where we spent 5 nights. The camper fitted perfectly under Phil’s carport so the occasional bit of rain didn’t bother us and we were able to use the house during the day. We didn’t get to see much of the peninsula as 3 of the days were spent meeting with the Forge National team discussing future directions, but it was great to see the guys again.

From McCrae we hopped on the Sorrento-Queenscliff ferry and made a 40 min trip across the bay instead of a 2 1/2 hr drive around. For $127.00 we felt this was well worth the $$ to save what would have been a laborious and unexciting day of driving. Instead the kids felt they had been given a treat and the drive from Queenscliff to Torquay was really enjoyable. The ferry ride was really nice and a great way to see a bit of the area too.

As we got into Torquay we were reminded again that it pays to check around before booking a campsite. The 3 ‘Great Ocean Rd’ parks we rang varied in price from $31.00 up to $60.00/night. With budget always a consideration we decided to go for the cheapest and stayed at Torquay Holiday Resort right in the heart of town. These guys were having ‘kids go free’ so we saved quite a bit and ended up staying two nights instead of the one we had planned. This was a good park with plenty of facilities for a decent price, but the second night was stuffed up by two noisy groups who wanted to ignore other people and party on.

It takes a lot to get me out of bed at night, but these guys did… twice… I often don’t go out because I know that it would be easy to end up in altercation and that isn’t going to help anyone. However after 2 hours of on again off again noise I left the camper at 11.30 to politely ask if they could keep the noise down. The group of 4 or 5 ‘p’ platers across from us were sitting on their verandah drinking and laughing, but apologised and moved away. However at 1.00am they woke us all again as boyfriend and girlfriend were having an alcohol fueled argument on their verandah. After 15 minutes of hearing their problems I had steam coming out of my ears and decided to make another approach. This time was a bit more icy and involved a bit more ‘telling’ than ‘asking’. They got the point and not surprisingly didn’t say ‘boo’ again that night. Probably lucky for both of us…

While in Torquay the surf was almost flat for the first two days, so any hopes of surfing the area were evaporating fast. We did manage to have lunch with Gary and Ev Heard on the Saturday and it was great to spend time with a couple who are engaged in some exciting and challenging work leading the 8th Day Community in inner city Melbourne. We met around 25 years ago at a Baptist Basketball Carnival and while we don’t know each other well at all, the web has been a place for reconnecting and observing each other’s lives from a distance. We really enjoyed being around some passionate and earthy people, catching up on life and hearing their dreams for that part of the world.

After the crappy night’s sleep, we headed off to make the drive down the Great Ocean Rd and enjoy it. We stopped into check the surf at Bells and Winki and saw beautiful 4 ft waves rolling thru, but decent crowds at both spots. I wasn’t up for the hassle so we decided to drive on.

There were some great waves all along and in hindsight we should have stopped at Fairhaven where there were a handful of guys getting into some clean beachies. However we decided to try our luck a little further along and stopped for lunch on the west side of Lorne where 3 blokes were riding a wave breaking down the point. For some reason in the time between us eating lunch and considering heading out the waves had died and they had all come in… so we hit the road again with the intention of camping in National park in Johanna and hopefully scoring some isolated waves there.

What I didn’t realise was that once you get around the other side of Cape Otway the swell goes beserk. Upon arriving at Johanna we drove into the carpark and saw huge 10ft mountains of water breaking well out to sea and looking frightening even from that vantage point, so I was a tad disappointed. You wouldn’t consider surfing that in your wildest dreams, so instead we set about putting up the camper.

Johanna is a beautiful area with big rolling green hills and a rugged coastline. The campsite is big and grassy and while I’m guessing the Nat park ranger must collect some fees, he didn’t turn up while we were there so we had a freebie. You also aren’t allowed to have fires, but my wife being the rebel she is decided to light one anyway. She and the kids did the marshmallow thing, but I thought it was warmer inside even with no power so I stayed there. Brrr…

The next day we packed up and headed off to do the rest of the Great Ocean Road. This is truly one of the great spectacles in Australia. Right from Torquay all the way thru to the end it is stunning. Danelle drove for most of it as my desire to keep looking to my left made it a little dangerous at times. Words and pictures can’t adequately capture the beauty of this place and even though I had done it several times before I was still in awe.

We pulled into Port Fairy around lunchtime expecting to stay somewhere there. This is a beautiful town with a strong Irish heritage evident in the buildings and names of the streets and buildings. It had a lot of charm and given a little more time we would have loved to stay a few more days and check it out. A price check revealed the budget campsites were either Killarney on the way in or at Yambuk on the way out. Still hopeful of a surf I opted for Yambuk and we drove out there and paid $24.00 for a powered site for the night.

This was actually a very good campsite, right on both beach and lake with great kids playground, good clean facilities and a cheap laundry with free clothes dryer. The surf was big, wild and woolly and the wind chill factor was up there with Jindabyne so I didn’t get to hit the water yet again. Oh well…

That evening the rain started at 7 and the wind started to blow pretty hard too. The BOM radar suggested there was a storm either just going to miss us, or go straight thru us… we weren’t sure which… Fortunately by 2am the rain had stopped and the storm had passed. The little Jayco survived another night… We could have stayed at Yambuk a bit longer as the kids found a huge slide that they loved and we were loving the wildness of the area, but we had arranged to catch up with old friends Garth and Sharron Wootton in Mount Gambier today, so we packed up again and hit the road.

The forecast for the next few nights is a bit dodgy so we have decided to sleep indoors rather than in our beloved camper. We can handle the rain, but if the wind blows like its supposed to then it could be very noisy and unenjoyable.

So today we have been loving catching up with the Woottons and getting our heads around the road ahead. We have until Friday 2nd of October to get to Esperance where we will be hooking up with some other good mates Graeme and Sharron Mason for the weekend. It means we will be seeing SA in 4 days and then driving pretty hard across the Nullabor. I have allowed for 2 nights at Cactus – just out of Penong – in case the surf is any good there, but otherwise we won’t be stopping for much sightseeing. It means we won’t see much of SA at all, but we just figure we can do it next time. Already we have pencilled in another trip in 5-6 years time so we will simply do the rest at that time.

Anyway that’s where we have been the last week or so…

With 5 1/2 weeks to go it feels very much like we are homeward bound. There is part of us excited by that and part of us quite sad. It has been great to be wandering travellers and especially in the last 2 months to have been able to spend a fair bit of time with friends.

But the real world beckons…

Today we left Jindabyne and headed thru to Lake’s Entrance. We weren’t sure how far we’d get, but it was an easy drive and we made it here by 2pm.

But it was the weirdest feeling…

I think leaving NSW was hard because we loved it so much there that one day we hope to pull up stumps and move there, but making that ‘right turn’ and heading in a westerly direction has left both of us a little deflated. It feels like we are ‘going home’ and we definitely don’t feel ready yet.

Having said that we are 7 weeks away from returning to Butler and as my friend Andrew reminded me today ‘7 weeks’ is a long time… its almost 2 years of annual leave… but from where we sit today it feels like a very short time.

I totally agree with Andrew’s comment on my facebook (‘what I’d give for 7 weeks!’), but here we are today feeling like the adventure is coming to an end. Part of me says ‘aw bugger it – just drive hard and do it in 3 days’ – and another part – the part I am listening to – says ‘now you need to really savour every moment’.

We are on something of a schedule again with a Forge National team meeting on Sept 14th/15th in McCrae on the Mornington Peninsula and then a weekend with friends in Esperance in Oct 2-4. We are also catching up with our good friends and ex co-workers at Lesmurdie Baptist, Garth & Sharron Wootton in Mt Gambier some time after we make the jaunt thru the Great Ocean Road.

But today I sit in a council caravan park in Lake’s Entrance for a single night as we make our way to Melbourne. Danelle wants to take the kids on the ‘Puffing Billy’ up in the Dandenongs, so I guess we will spend at least one day in the city. Cities have not been places we have spent much time over this journey. They are all a bit the same from state to state and not where we find the greatest peace and rejuvenation, but they are still hubs and for that reason we will spend some time in them.

From here the plan is to spend a couple of weeks in Victoria, a day or two in South Australia as we drive thru (I know there are nice parts, but it just doesn’t grab us at all – maybe 2 nights at Cactus if the surf is decent) and then the final month cruising up the coast of WA including Esperance, Bremer Bay, Albany, Denmark, Walpole and Busso before heading back home to Butler.

I wrote earlier that I was getting bored while on holidays, but now I am getting concerned that they are coming to an end. There is lots of ‘self talk’ about how good it will be to be back home… but I’m not convincing myself yet…

Perhaps 7 weeks is long enough to make the difference… we can only hope!

Ok – this is another post for my surfer friends…

We spent the last 4 or 5 days in the little town of Pambula in southern NSW. The point break at Pambula is said to be one of the Australia’s best waves but it rarely breaks these days and didn’t while we were there… So I headed out to the beachie instead and it was pretty nice.

We were staying at the ‘Pambula Hilton’ – a caravan park with everything (even heated bathroom floors!) and right on the beachfront. Its usually $56.00/night for a family of 4, but because it was winter they waived the kids cost and charged us $36.00. If you’re down that way I can recommend it as a great place to stay.

The first day we were there was good with some nice offshore waves and a small crowd but yesterday morning was fantastic. What was supposed to be a stormy day turned offshore and was a sweet 3ft with peaks all up the beach and a really good one just 50m from where we were staying.

We were due to move on… but who could leave when it was as good as this?…

There was no one out and although it was cold, it was probably the best surf of the trip. I’ve uploaded some pics below…

Needless to say it was very hard to move on…

And those walls held up!

‘Blog That!’

Those were Danelle’s words to me on Sunday morning after church… You see it was one of those days when you see a bunch of people getting it right and we both felt it. Let me tell you about it…

After having dinner with some of the folks from Pambula Baptist on Saturday night we decided to join them in church on Sunday. They were great people, we enjoyed their company and were keen to meet their wider community and share the time with them.

As Sunday dawned it just happened that the surf was again looking good… but we had committed to church. Damn… 

Knowing that it was also Fathers Day I was even more tempted to bale as I rarely enjoy the annual routine of making a fuss of dads and preaching on ‘God as Father’ or something similar. I find fathers day gets a little routine for my liking and I have heard enough of those kinds of sermons.

But I wanted to go, so after some tears and frustration at home because Ellie couldn’t decide what to wear we finally got on the road and down to the building where they meet.

It’s a double classroom and nothing very special about it, but the vibe the folks there created more than made up for a simple environment.

If you think I’ve been a little caustic in regard to some of my experiences of church over the last 4 months then prepare yourself for a much more effusive description here today because it left an impression.

Just to give context, we wandered into a fairly typical entry area with some people greeting and a little girl giving out fathers day gifts. We made our way in and found 4 seats just near the front – closer than I normally like, but all ok. The room filled up with 60 or 70 people, a few young families but predominantly the 50+s and quite a few older folk. It looked like you’d expect a church to look in a retirement / tourist region.

The leader led us in a bunch of songs that were excellent God focused expressions of worship and did a brilliant job. There was noticeable desire in the people to be there and to engage – something that always lifts the energy in the room. I found myself being drawn in… a rare experience of late and one I welcomed.

There was also lots of laughter and love. We celebrated with a bloke who had just got a job after 8 months of searching and we listened as people described what is going on in the church. It was warm and felt like a healthy family who were glad to be together.

We were welcomed specifically and made to feel like part if the family (probably because we were known to the elders) and then Sam was asked if he wanted to read a couple of verses out of his new Bible. (we bought him a Bible the day before and he eats, sleeps and goes to the toilet with it) He had brought it with him to dinner last night and shared his knowledge with anyone who would listen so Garry who invited him up was aware of his excitement. To his credit the little bloke wandered down the front and started flipping thru to try and find a verse. He finished up reading John 3:16 and of course it made everyone love him. While it was engaging and a little cute, Garry told me later that a priority for the church this year has been to get people into the Bible, so Sam was a very good reminder of how passionate we can be to know God.

The message was also by one of the mums and again we were impresed with the passion, clarity and depth that we observed. I didnt sense that the woman was a natural preacher, but the content and sense of challenge she shared was really top shelf stuff and left both of us saying ‘wow – she is good!’

Communion followed and was again well led and significant. Then there was the whole after church bit where we had people speak to us non stop before inviting us out for lunch.

In many ways it was a typical church service, but it’s hard to capture in words the intangible qualities of a church that really seems to be getting some things right. 

Again I was reminded that the look of the building or the quality of the musos etc is not what impresses me these days. Buy the atmosphere created by people who show genuine love for one another, love for God and love for strangers speaks volumes about the health of the place.

I’m sure they are a mob with their flaws and foibles like everyone else, but maybe it’s the case that when a community loves well everything else can be easily relegated to secondary places.

Interestingly this is a community without a paid leader, which again impresses because it shows the way churches can function when they are left to get on with it and aren’t able to rely on a salaried person.

There was much to learn and much to be thankful for at Pambula last Sunday.

Following on my post from last week about our not so grand experience of being visitors at church I received a couple of comments that suggested I tend to focus on the negative or that I need to change my attitude.

Sadly as we have travelled I have had way more disturbing and frustrating experiences of church than I have had encouraging and inspiring. But last night was one that offered some hope… and with Anglicans… (yes I smirked too… 🙂 )

We are staying with Danelle’s sister in the coal mining town of Muswellbrook about 2 hours from Newcastle and we decided to visit their community last night. I almost didn’t go Ellie was wanting to stay home and I didn’t want another lamentable experience to add to the pile.

But at the last minute Ellie changed her tune and I was able to join the rest of the crew. The experience was as refreshing as it was simple.

We arrived at the church hall bang on time for the 6pm service along with about 40 others of all ages. Perhaps because of my experience last week I was rapt to walk in and have a group of 3 blokes immediately open up and welcome me in. Nothing particularly hard about that, but they did it.

The service began with a woman leading proceedings while the kids played with some toys down by the front. The vibe was not one of having to have it all right, but the focus seemed to be on the sense of being a family and doing things together.

There were songs, prayers and a kids bit and then the kids moved to the side of the hall to do an activity. A little later when they were looking a little restless the minister stepped up and took them outside for a ‘run around’. This was very impressive as the minister obviously saw ‘running around’ with the kids as part of his contribution to the night.

The bloke preaching was the local prison chaplain and while it wasn’t an unforgettable sermon, it did sound real and honest. When it was all said and done we stood around and chatted before heading home.

Simple…

The big difference between this week and last week?…

Friendly people across the board who seemed glad to have us there (even if were tourists)

A very unpretentious vibe.

A sync between what they say they are about and what they behaved like.

No doubt its a church with its strengths and weaknesses like every other, but if I were to live in the town then I’d have no hesitation in spending a bit more time with the good people of Muswellbrook Anglican.

When travelling it really helps to have a bit of electronic assistance with finding waves and checking surf. Here are my most used sites for surf info in order of usage:

1. Coastalwatch – this one gives wave info, predictions, weather, wind and surfcams where possible for every state in Oz. It is a great site and easy to get around. I have been using the iPhone app for 3 days now and it is brilliant – worth every cent of $3.99 you pay for it. For those using ordinary mobiles http://m.coastalwatch.com/ is where you want to head.

2. Wannasurf – This is a site that gives you most of the main surf breaks in an area as well as a description of how to get there and what to expect. It isn’t always accurate, but it does get you started and it does have pics of the waves. I have surfed in a couple of places not registered on there and I’m sure there are heaps of others too.

3. Google Maps or Google Earth – once you know where swell & wind is coming from you can think for yourself and use satellite maps to help you locate some decent and remote breaks

4. Swellnet – kinda similar but with info presented slightly differently. One cool feature of this site is the desktop widget for staying up to date on surf conditions.

5. Seabreeze – this is for an easy to read weather,swell and wind guide all around Oz. I use it a heap back home, but I think the new iPhone coastalwatch app is going to supercede it.

As much as these are useful its pretty hard to beat a bit of good ole local knowledge from a friendly face. I find that as I chat with locals and ask questions most are pretty happy to give me their tips on where to surf. I get the feeling it helps that as a 45 year old I am not likely to be a threat in water these days…

Anyway, if surfing’s your thing then you can’t go wrong with these sites.

Ok – so this has become more of a surfing blog in the last few weeks, but I guess that’s where my head is at as we travel in this part of the world.

For those who care here are some pics of the places we have been surfing… For those who don’t… you know what you can do 🙂

Sapphire Beach at Coffs Harbour – nice 2-3ft beachies with no crowds

Me about to egg it

The water was a beautiful colour and temperature.

A panorama of Scotts Head

Scotts Head – small but clean and long – and cold…

Scotts Head is a great mal wave – would have been better on my 8’8″!