Farewell to Mount Warning!

Yes! We have our car back and we are on our way home!  But I'm jumping ahead a few days, so let's go back to Thursday.
Michaela's school had already finished for the Summer holidays, so we spent the morning together at Palm Beach, just north of Tweed Heads where there is a "pirate ship playground" beside Currumbin Lagoon.  After a bite to eat at the classy little cafe adjoining the park we drove home, picking up our car from the mechanic's on the way.  This time there were no further disappointments and we actually got to drive it away!  We just had time to drive home and change before meeting our friends for a farewell dinner together at the Tumbulgum Tavern.

Tired after a long day, both children fell asleep in the car on the way home.

The children had the opportunity to spend one last day together on Friday.  We wanted to take the car for a bit of a run before towing the caravan, and drove south of Byron Bay to visit the much acclaimed Macadamia Castle. From the glossy advertisements I had seen everywhere I had expected something a little less run down.  Nonetheless, the children enjoyed meeting all the animals and playing on the tree house fort and we enjoyed the locally grown coffee.  I also spent some money on the macadamia products in the gift shop!

We managed to get the caravan packed and hitched up on Friday night and were ready to hit the road just after 7 am on Saturday morning.  The first part of the drive took us up out of the Tweed Caldera and into the hinterland beyond, leaving the rainforest for wide, flat grazing land.  After breakfast at Casino we continued our journey South.  The State Parks we passed were beginning to look more familiar. Instead of the caribbeens, Davidsons plums and cedars of the rainforests we were leaving behind there were now forests of tall grey eucalypts and as we approached the coast the road began to be lined with casuarinas and banksias.

A final glimpse of Mount Warning...

It was lunchtime when we reached Coffs Harbour, so we made some sandwiches and spent a pleasant half hour on the beach. The children had a wonderful time chasing seagulls, doing cartwheels on the white sand and generally letting off steam while I took photos of the beautiful views.  None of us wanted to leave so soon, but we had a lot of ground yet to cover.

We made one final stop at Taree to let the children have a stretch before the last leg of the day's journey.  We had planned to camp at O'Sullivans Gap but missed the signposts and decided to drive on.  The children are good travellers but it had been a long day and by that time they had had enough!  It was almost six o'clock and we decided that rather than looking until we found somewhere nice, we would just stop at the next available rest area.
Which turned out to be on a gravel road beside the "Ayers Rock Cafe".  "Tacky", "corny" and "kitsch" are a few of the words that immediately spring to my mind, but the children used words like "great", "amazing" and even "beautiful".  Esther thought that whoever built the place had done a great service to people who (unlike us) had never had the privilege of visiting the real Ayers Rock because they could take photos of this one instead.  Arthur just stood still next to the caravan and said, "Breathe deeply, Mum.  Can you smell the lovely smell of the bush?  I'm so glad we can breathe all this lovely fresh air tonight!"  (Never mind that we're right beside the highway and there is a distinct whiff of petrol fumes mixed with the "bush".)  Part of the fun of travelling with children is seeing the world through their eyes.  Who would have thought that an expanse of gravel and dirt was beautiful because of the way the evening light created shadows and made it look like the surface of the moon? The children pretended to be a space explorers discovering a strange planet, and discovered a "lake" (ie, muddy puddle) into which they threw "moon rocks" to see how deep it was.  

When you look for it there is beauty everywhere.  Each of the flowers on this tiny spike we found growing in the grass measures about two millimeters but is so perfect in its detail!

This reminds me of the verse from Psalm 133 we always had on the wall at home, written out by Dad:
"Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!"

We were actually at Port Stevens overnight, separated from the water by a narrow belt of bush, a high fence and a lot of "Private; Keep Out" signs. As with so many places on this part of our journey we will have to hope for another opportunity to spend more time and explore the area. After the month's delay at Mount Warning time has run out and our priority now is to get home for Christmas!

........ And now it's Sunday morning and we're on the road once more.  It's very overcast and Arthur just pointed out that it looks as though today won't be as hot.  We hope to make it to Wollongong if all goes well.  We will spend a day there with Aunty Marian while the car has a service. (The mechanic at Murwillumbah was very insistant that we should have an oil and filter change done after 800 km if we didn't want to risk damaging the new engine!)