Thank you 

Thank you to all of you who have expressed concern about the blog not appearing for three days, I recognise that we might have caused all our loyal readers around the world some distress and we apologise unreservedly for not keeping our fingers on the pulse and all of you up to day with our exploits.

Yesterday we decided on a full day out, having been incarcerated by the heat the day before. We chose to go to Newcastle to look at the coast a little further north. We prepared our sandwiches, not wishing to purchase expensive sandwiches out, filled our water bottles packed the rucksack and like true Cornish tourists were ready for our day out. 

Using modern technology with aplomb we put Gosford into the satellite navigation equipment and set off. The route chosen out of North Balgowlah was interesting as every fifty yards we were turning right or left, but eventually we emerged unscathed and on the road David had said we should take. By this point we had decided to purchase an old fashioned piece of equipment called a map.

We went to a garage but no maps were to be found so we carried on for a while and stopped at another garage , still no map. By this time we had arrived at the Ku-Ring-Gai Chase National Park, where they charged us eleven dollars to enter. Still had we come the day before the park would have been closed and we would have faced a lengthy detour. Bobbin Head in the park was a beautiful picnic area set in a fiord like setting and we walked along the river for a while looking at the boats in the marina and watching a pair of eagles circling above us, I was a little concerned that they might swoop and take Rosemarie, but that seemed to give up on that idea, luckily for me. 

We drove on and found a discovery centre which we decided to visit and we are glad we did. We saw a brush turkey and its nest and visited a fantastic lookout, we were sad to leave but we had said we would go to the coast and go to the coast we would. 

So, we set off again and went to Gosford which was very pretty and then on up the coast to an interesting place named The Entrance, where we stopped and photographed some pelicans. We had lunch in Bateaux Bay overlooking the beach about forty metres below. We then went up the coast to Newcastle which provide an interesting study of place names as we went through Wallsend, Jesmond, and Gateshead before visiting the wonderful beach at Stockton. What was interesting to me was that this is a huge coal mining area and the trip to Stockton involved passing several extremely large coal loaders, very scenic.

On our route we tried two more garages before we found a map, what are garages for? We then discovered that that map ran out halfway through our adventure and had to look for another one, luckily we had less trouble purchasing that one, I was very grateful as garage forecourts are not the most interesting places in the world.

We came back via the freeway and had a wonderful meal of prawns and steak before retiring to bed, a great day exploring some more of Australia we have not seen.