I was thrilled when I woke up this morning and saw that the sun was shining. We were late coming to the beach since the gate of the campsite was locked and we had to go around and were worried we might miss the tour. When we arrived to the parking lot surrounded by pyramid shaped tank traps or Dragon’s teeth there were two 4wd cars there. The beach was fortified against a possible attack by Imperial Japanese forces during WWII and the pyramids are what’s left of it. I was expecting a bus and more people but we were the only ones there. The driver of one of the cars motioned for us and he told us we were the only tour participants. We assumed he just picked us up in his own private car. Unlike our Fraser island tour guide, this one seemed pretty uninformed and just drove us to the locations without too much explanation.

First we did a bit of sandboarding which is like sledding but on sand dunes. We did that in two locations. It was scary at first but then became fun. The really bad part was walking back up because it was so steep and we were out of shape. So we didn’t sandboard for very long because we got too tired.

Sandboarding

Stockton Beach is less than 3.5 km from a military base and we saw and heard many military airplanes fly over us as we rode along the beach. The next stop was Tin City, an actual town in the dunes with a handful of inhabitants. It was first built to store provisions for shipwrecked sailors because the beach was a popular place to become shipwrecked with almost 100 wrecks between Newcastle and Port Stephens. It was also where Mad Max with Mel Gibson was filmed and I feel like I have to see the movie now. It was interesting to see how some people chose to live, I definitely wouldn’t. The last thing to see on the trip is the wreck of the MV Sygna, a Norwegian bulk carrier, which we stopped at and observed.  I thought Stockton Beach was very unique and really enjoyed the visit.

Tin city

Since it was only midday we drove to Newcastle and had a look around the town. There was a nice beach, but we didn’t have time to go swimming, and a lookout over the beach. The centre was cute and there was a lookout over the central train station so we climbed the tower and had a panoramic view of Newcastle. It was a nice town to have some lunch in and walk around but there was not much else to do or see.

That evening we decided to stay in Lake Macquarie, for no particular reason other than we had liked Port Macquarie, so we figured Lake Macquarie was nice too. It wasn’t particularly nice and we could tell we were getting to a more populated area since people did not seem as friendly and the bbq’s weren’t free anymore. The lake wasn’t a swimming lake and may have been nice if we had a boat but we weren’t too impressed.