Pacific Sunrise, The Waiting Game, and Don't Let the You-Know-Whats Bite

Date: 20/11/2010 to 25/11/2010

After the failed campsite search, I rode on to the Great Lakes region of NSW.  I had looked for possible beach campsites and marked some down in my GPS.  By the time I got to Elizabeth Beach, it was around 9pm, but there was an almost full moon that night so there was still plenty of light.  I talked to a few locals who suggested a site or two a few miles north on Seven Mile Beach, near Forster.  I drove on, making a bazillion u-turns checking out potential spots (which is why you really should pick out your campsite during the day, but I’m an idiot).  Pretty much all of the campsites that I picked out earlier ended up being duds – they were either parking lots with hilly / sandy approaches to the beach (so I’d have to leave my bike a couple hundred meters back), or weren’t sites at all.  The absolute last one I had marked on my GPS turned out to be golden though.  The road leading towards the northernmost point on Seven Mile Beach was pretty bumpy, but by the time I reached the end I was at a totally secluded beach, with headland to the north and a view all the way down the full seven miles back towards Elizabeth Beach.  The view was absolutely perfect, and even though it was 10pm, I didn’t need my headlamp to set up my tent.  I did need to find a couple of different spots to pitch it though, since the soil was too sandy, and my pegs wouldn’t stay in the ground.  I must’ve looked like an idiot shuffling my half set-up tent up and down the beach looking for some solid ground.

And….notch up another night without sleep.  As if you’d expect anything else.  The upside of no sleep was being up around 5am for first light and the sunrise.  That was amazing – I am normally the type of person who, given the chance, will sleep until noon instead of getting up in the actual morning, but I’m beginning to understand why some people are early risers.  I packed my sleeping bag, foam mat, and attempted to pack up the tent too, but it was too wet to be useful, so I just hung it up on my bike to dry out.  For the next 45 minutes or so, I trekked up and down the beach taking pictures of the sunrise.  Words really can’t describe the beauty of the colors as the sun rose over the Pacific to the east.  Despite my sleep-deprived haze, I don’t think I’ll ever forget the sight.

The solitude of my beach campsite was demolished pretty quickly though, and around 6:30am droves of surfers showed up at the end of the gnarled dirt road in their utes, with boards in tow.  Between 6:30am and when I left around 10:00am, I counted at least 20 locals taking a crack at the waves at what was my bedroom just the night before.  It was a pretty cool couple of hours, just sitting, waiting for my things to dry, and watching surfer after surfer ride the waves into the shore.  I honestly don’t know what people on this part of the coast do for a living; but I know what they all do before they go and do whatever it is that pays the bills.

Around 11am, I headed towards a town called Seal Rocks on a suggestion from the same locals from the night before.  Another day, another potholed dirt road…this time, to “Treachery Beach”.  Terrible name for a tourist spot, but it’s a pretty incredible beach.  A very popular surfing spot as well, it has huge sand dunes separating the beach from the hills inland.  But the campsite there was pretty seedy, and the beach smelled like dead fish.  So I move on once again.

In typical form, I decided to take another hours-long ride down the highway to the next big town instead of camping, aware that insomnia was just a campsite away.  I’m sure I’ll figure the whole camping thing out, either as a result of built-up insomnia forcing me to get sleep, or finally getting used to the cramped arrangement.  So anyhow, I drove on to Port Macquarie, which is an important waypoint, since I was having my replacement Spot GPS sent here.  Unfortunately it wasn’t supposed to come for another few days at least, so I guess I’d just spend the next 4 or 5 days here, relax, and catch up on sleep lost in my tent.

Covered in Treacherous Beach dust, I arrived in Port Macquarie around 6:30pm, and surprise, I run into the same German girls from Newcastle (two of the brainless in “Peter and four other brainless people” pub quiz team fame).  Australia is a pretty big country, but the hostels dotting the land on the other hand, make it seem like one cozy neighborhood – just the houses change every few days.  Half of the people you meet are going in the opposite direction, and you end up getting to know them for a day or two at most.  The other half are moving in staggered fashion (think rabbit & hare) with you, in the same direction, and invariably staying at the same budget accommodation as you.  On one hand it’s kinda too bad, since you limit yourself to meeting an increasingly limited group of people, but it is nice having familiar faces every once in a while to hang out with.  I’m probably exaggerating it a bit, but it does make sense that you run into familiar faces since the east coast of Australia is pretty limited geographically, and most people do the logical thing and go north-to-south or south-to-north.

In any event, I cleaned myself off and had home-cooked Thai dinner with a hyperactive Thai-Canadian guy, the German girls, and a French guy with whom I also shared a dorm room in Newcastle.  That night was the first time I had been in a top bunk bed in about 10-12 years, and I swear I clung to the wall in fear I’d fall off an break my arm or leg.

Over the next few days I hung out with a Swiss guy, Reto.  We walked around town, saw the lighthouse and had a pretty nice BBQ with steamed potatoes, carrots, zucchini, and about a kilo of marinated chicken.  I spent a lot of time culling pictures and working on my blog from McDonalds, so there really wasn’t much noteworthy that went on during the middle of the week.  Oh yeah there was…I was just about eaten alive by everyone’s lovely bedfellow (if you’re in NYC), the bedbug.  First I thought they were chiggers, another great thing to discover one has, but they definitely turned out to be bedbugs.  The itching kept me up at night, and I almost exhausted my entire supply of cortisone cream in a few days.  The welts, you can imagine, look lovely.

Enough of bugs (though I’m sure there’ll be plenty of that as the trip goes on)…On Friday, after four days I think, my package finally kind of arrived.  I say “kind of” since you really can’t tell these days by the tracking status descriptions.  “Arrived at international delivery location” sounds like “go pick it up, it’s at the local post office”, but actually means it’s about 300 miles away and might not get delivered at all.  By that time I couldn’t stand another night getting killed by bedbugs, so I drove on to Coffs Harbour.  I’ll deal with the package on Monday and have it redirected wherever I’m next, if it’s even re-directable…otherwise I’ll just have Santa send it for Christmas.  For now, it’ll be cortisone cream to get rid of these welts and a super-hot load of laundry to kill whatever bugs decided to tag along to Coffs to see the Big Banana.