After Tobi made friends with two Dutch girls on the campground, the drive the next day to the highway was no problem at all. The two girls planned to go north, but until the highway we had the same way. Somehow we made it to put our luggage and the four of us into their car, which was before already packed (see picture). Arrived at the highway, it was time to look for a good spot. 10 minutes after standing at the entry lane of the highway without success, we changed our place and went onto the highway. 10 minutes later we found our first lift for around 100km. Again a farmer, in an even older car, and again quite funny. He dropped us off on a truck parking spot and we stood again with Kerstin’s “Newcastle” sign on the highway. It took us a bit longer, but we found a Kiwi who drove us to Newcastle. Again a strange character, probably in his mid-30s, narcotics agent in the prison of Port Macquarie (he even had 2 tracker dogs on board) and former rugby player (what else) in the Australian army!!! Short: an absolutely relaxed guy and incredibly interested in Germany. While Kerstin had it quite comfortable on the backseat and had a nap, Tobi tried to destroy his image of a typical German. He thought basically that all Germans are well educated, thin, good looking and open-minded (he probably thinks so because he often picks up German backpackers, who are in average well educated and due to the lack of money underfed and somehow open-minded otherwise they wouldn’t be in Australia.)
In the beginning, he wanted to drive us to the town of our couchsurfer Greg, but after a call with his boss he had to drop us earlier, unfortunately at the wrong side of Newcastle. Greg was, however, so nice to pick us up from there. That’s already a perfect description of Greg, extremely nice, helpful and the same age as we are and he close before his next trip to Brazil (after he already spent 3 years in Canada, USA and Central America).
The three days were filled with a lot of sightseeing. Greg drove us to the city of Newcastle the next day, where we could see the biggest coal harbor of the world (yes you read correct, NOT of the southern hemisphere). He also picked us up again in the afternoon and showed us the nice café “I Love Oma” (German for grandma), whose owners are immigrants from a town not too far from Munich. Later on we picked up another couchsurfer from the train station, Anna from Denmark. After some talking Greg gave all of us a mountain bike and we cycled through the bush. Greg did the same in the morning and already told us that he directly drove into the rain, but we didn’t think much about it as we were starting when there was not even a cloud visible in the sky. Unfortunately Greg seemed to attract the rain this day, why we came into a heavy rain shower after only 10 minutes of driving which kept on until we were back at the house. It was extremely funny and a completely different Australian experience. After a warm shower, we drove to the supermarket in order to cook our new wrap recipe for Greg.
The next day, we rented a car together with Anna to go to Nelson Bay, a bay 80km north of Newcastle. Finally a coastal part of the east coast that hit our expectations, as after Noosa everything looked quite similar. Crystal clear water, really pretty bays and meter-high sand dunes. In addition, an offshore sand island that is connected to the mainland during low tide and you even can walk to it during that time (off course there was high tide when we were there…). And then it became quite exciting, after we walked along the “One Mile Beach” we reached Samurai Beach that figured out to be a nudist beach. .. Back at the car (where all of us left our thongs), Kerstin realized disappointingly that someone stole her new-bought expensive Havaianas-thongs just bought in Noosa. Who is doing things like that?????? Arrived at the next beach, Tobi realized that his smartphone was missing. What’s going on today??? So we drove back to One-Mile-Beach and indeed found his mobile in a sand dune, the beginning of our walk. We also could have been unlucky and could have to walk for half an hour along the beach, but at least we had a bit of luck this day.
After we dropped off the car the next day, we drove with Greg to a sea-pool directly built in the cliffs. During high tide, the waves from the ocean reach the pool. Extremely cold but almost idyllic, mainly because the pool derives from the time when the first settlers arrived in Newcastle. Afterwards, we enjoyed a coffee close to the sea and drove to a guided brewery visit with a subsequent free beer tasting. As German you cannot say no 🙂
Then we had to go to the train to drive to our next hosts in the southwest of Sydney. Because couchsurfing in Sydney didn’t work (again :-/), Steve (our couchsurfer from Gladstone) asked his sister to host us and she luckily accepted (btw thanx again to Steve 😉 ). As the 3.5h train drive only costed us 8$, we didn’t hitchhike for that (probably would have been worked not as well as before). There were still a few highlights on the list around Sydney, which one is another story.