Gold Coast to Newcastle

After watching the weather for a few days, we decided to depart the Gold Coast on Tuesday morning. Our passage to Port Stephens would take two nights, though en route we changed plans and headed straight to Newcastle. The seas were calm and we had to motorsail some of the way due to lack of wind, but we wanted to reach Newcastle before a low crossed and brought strong winds, rain and thunder. As it turned out Newcastle didn't get anywhere near the amount of rain and wind that our family in Victoria received.

Arriving in Newcastle on Thursday afternoon, we made plans to catch up with our niece Alice and her fiancé Brendan. Meeting up in a Thai restaurant close to the Newcastle yacht club, we all had a yummy dinner and then bought Alice and Brendan back to see the boat. Saying goodbye after midnight, we arranged to see Alice again the following day.

What a welcome!

Ro, H, J, E and P went for a walk to find a supermarket on Friday and we got the ingredients for Ro to cook us all dinner. There are some beautiful buildings in Newcastle, with many dating back to the 1800's. Alice joined us after work and Ro, P and Alice stayed up late, chatting and catching up over a glass of wine or two. On Saturday we said goodbye to Ro as she headed to the airport to catch her plane back to Brisbane. Then we spent the afternoon completing the jigsaw Linda had bought up, with J and H placing the final pieces of the puzzle.

We hired a car for Tuesday and Wednesday so we could explore some more of Newcastle and visit Alice and Brendan at their house. G, H, J, E and P all got a quick haircut before attending to some Christmas shopping. Then we navigated our way to Alice and Brendan's house, where we spent the afternoon and evening hanging out. Alice cooked us a delicious roast pork with veggies, something we haven't cooked on the boat, as it uses a lot of gas and heats up the boat. So not something you want to cook when the temperature is already over 30 degrees, and you don't have air conditioning!

Car shopping..

On Wednesday we visited the Newcastle museum, learning about the local industries and some history of the town. We were fortunate to have one of the volunteer staff talk to us about the steel industry. Then we made our way through the robotics exhibit, with the kids all trying out the virtual reality soccer before a man talked to us about the annual Robocup competition. The Robocup is where university students program robots to compete in an actual soccer match. Their plan is by 2050 to have a robotic team that can not only play, but beat the human World Cup team.

After leaving the museum we drove up to Fort Scratchley, where we watched the volunteers fire a small cannon. This only happens once a week and we just happened to arrive in time. After a quick tour, we learnt that Fort Scratchley was the only coastal fortification to fire upon an enemy naval vessel in the Second World War. A Japanese submarine was just outside the harbour and fired about 24 shells upon Newcastle. While the fort did not hit the submarine, it did get close enough to encourage their departure.

History lesson over for the day, we drove along the beach for a while before heading back to town to reprovision for our time in Pittwater. Provisioning done, we raced to return the car before closing time, as we were going to leave the next morning. Alice and Brendan came down to have dinner with us and then we showed them our Christmas decorations we had bought the previous day. This year we managed to buy a small tree which was exciting as last year we couldn't find one in French Polynesia so we wrapped tinsel around the mast post instead. It's nice that we will be in Australia to celebrate Christmas this year, though we're not quite sure which anchorage or town we'll be in yet. Hugging Al and Brendan goodbye, we will hope to see them again before their wedding in 2019. A week after arrival, we headed out of Throsby creek and Newcastle harbour, bound for Broken Bay.