The real beginning

We left the farm today, so this was really the beginning of our aimless travels. It was very exciting. Even just driving down the road from the farm with nowhere in particular to be was so exhilirating.

We had decided to head to Coffs Harbour to attend to some business, mostly internet related. My poor mother hasn't heard from me in over a week now and is probably going a bit crazy (Hi Mom!) so I would like to be able to get these blog posts, well, posted. Our wireless internet still isn't working though. Tomorrow we'll have to find an internet cafe to sort it all out.

First stop, Bellingen. I went to Bellingen yesterday with Kathryn and I LOVED IT. It is an awesome little town with a real hippy flavour - great clothes shops, organic bakeries, homemade gelato shop (yummm), and a wonderful health food shop that carries everything one could want, including all of the somewhat obscure ingredients I use in my cookbook (rapadura, coconut flour, wholemeal spelt flour, etc). It had a little recipe book put together by local people to raise money for a local cause, and Kath said that I should try my recipe book out there. It was a good idea.

So today we headed down Waterfall Way to Bellingen. We explored a bit, got some aforementioned gelato, and dropped by the health food shop that was unfortunately closed. I left a book and my blurb and contact details, and hopefully they'll be interested in carrying them! Nate found a little shop with pirate excavation sets for sale - they are little treasure chest shaped packed sand with something hidden inside, and you use the mallet, chisel and brush to get the treasure out of the middle. He absolutely loved it. Here's him at work:



And the treasure emerging:



Taking shape:



Maya coming to help:



He loves his new necklace and plans to wear it until he is old so that he can remember how much fun he had as a kid. Awwww.



The kids used all of the leftover yellow glittery sand as "fairy dust" and sprinkled it in tiny quantities all over the place. The fun lasted for ages.

We took the scenic route from Bellingen, heading through spectacular valley scenery towards Gleniffer, along the enchantingly named Never Never Creek towards Valery. The views through this area were amazing. The cloud cover may have even added to the view as it sat low, misty in the surrounding hills. The sometimes paved forest road, carved out of red earth, had occasional nausea inducing drop offs. But soon enough we were back to the Pacific Hwy and heading up to Coffs.

We headed straight for the beach and had a nice, if chilly and misty, play. We took advantage of the warm beach showers - Nate had a shower, but Eli and Maya needed a bit of a soak so we brought over our "bathtub":



Before we left Sydney, Nick just happened to hear a news story about residents of Bondi complaining to the council about people sleeping in their campervans on the street. Apparently there were no grounds for action because there is no law against sleeping in your vehicle. Good to know. So tonight we are parked on a quiet street with no signs posted anywhere about not stopping or staying overnight. We have all of our curtains closed and doors locked, and from the outside you would have no idea there was even anyone in here. There are a few other vans and even a motorhome parked along this long stretch of road, so I don't think we're the first ones to come up with this idea.