Day 61: 20231123 Thursday, November 23, 2023-Port Stephens, New South Wales Australia
The day is off to a warmer and muggier start with temperature in the mid 70’s˚F and humidity around 70%. There is a gentle breeze that helps, but so does the air conditioning. We headed off to Port Stephens which is about an hour’s drive to the north along the coast. As we drove past Newcastle’s industrial waterfront, we passed some remarkable port infrastructure for handling huge volumes of coal.
Newcastle has been and may still be the largest single coal export port in the world. There were mountains of coal fed by rail lines, and enormous conveyor belt systems which carries the coal over the roadway, and onto conveyor belts that run the length of the waterfront which fed enormous machines that transfer the coal from that linear conveyor into bulk freighters. It was all very impressive.
Port Stephens is actually a fairly large region encompassing several small cities and towns. It is just far enough outside Sydney that it is easily reachable for week end get-aways and there are lots of tourist attractions including wildlife parks, wineries, distilleries, seaside shopping districts and lots of beautiful white sand beaches. We explored some less and more developed stretches of beach. There are lots of expensive weekend rentals on the water. There are also lots of birds including black swans on the water. It’s a great place to spend time relaxing on a beach or walking along the water in seaside towns.
There are also several nice viewpoints, some reachable by drive, and others by hiking. We did a 1.5 mile hike with 500’ of elevation to the Tomaree Headland summit which was reminiscent of the stairs of the Grand Canyon Walk in the Blue Mountains that nearly did Janet in, but this was a lot shorter and although it was all uphill going to the summit, it was all downhill coming back. The view is spectacular with the coastal terrain reminding us a bit of the view from the top of Sugarloaf Mountain around Rio de Janeiro, but without Christ the Redeemer. The coast is lush, green and rugged, but with long stretches of white sand beaches between rocky prominences.
We had lunch at Fingal Bay at a small takeaway place famous for their meat pies but alas, they were sold out. So we had to settle on baskets of fish and chips. We could have easily split a single plate but we had no idea of the generous serving portion which was practically American sized. The quality was also quite good, but they needed to provide some tartar sauce.
The last view point was the Gan Gan Lookout, which was an easy drive to the top of a small mountain which was topped with a massive nest of cellular antennas. The views are quite breath taking, but it was nice not to be out of breath from having to hike up to that particular viewpoint.
We were ready for showers and naps after our outings. When dinner time rolled around, we realized it was Thanksgiving Day, although we are one day ahead of the US here in Australia. Australia doesn’t celebrate our American Thanksgiving, but oddly enough, they do make a big deal about Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. There is no place in Newcastle, or even anywhere outside of Sydney where you might find a proper Thanksgiving Turkey dinner with all the fixings, so the best we could manage is Kentucky Fried Chicken. Fortunately, there was one in a mall just a few miles from the hotel.
We are continually amazed by how busy Australian shopping malls are. Even on a Thursday night, the mall was crowded with lots of young people like it was the ’80’s in the US. Most of the malls we have visited recently in the US have been full of vacant storefronts if not on their way to being shuttered completely. Amazon is not nearly as prevalent in Australia as it is in the USA. I haven’t seen a single Amazon delivery vehicle the whole time we have been in Australia.
The food court in the mall was quite busy and had lots of food vendors ranging all sorts of cuisines. There was even a dumpling shop with Xiao long bao, but we were after American style poultry, so KFC it was. The Australian KFC only offers original recipe and the birds are pretty small compared to the ones used in America, but it was still finger licking good.
Australia seems to be ahead of the USA when it comes to environmental and social concerns. Everywhere in tourist areas are kiosks acknowledging the history of the Aboriginal peoples and their stewardship of the land through history, but stop short of reconveying ownership of the most valuable bits of real estate. Visiting KFC brought this to mind because fast food restaurants have done away with plastics and use wooden utensils and paper straws. We also haven’t seen a disposable plastic shopping bag in Australia either.
The weather is taking a turn as it started raining pretty good as we drove back to the hotel. It’s supposed to be wet and humid the next two days, so we’ll hunt around for a museum to spend tomorrow in. Saturday we head back very early to Sydney to return the rental car and check into the Hyatt Regency Sydney to join the Princess land tour which officially begins our last cruise segment.
