Wednesday April 23, 2014

After saying our thank-yous and farewells to Sue and Graeme we headed towards Stockton and Anna Bay.

We discovered there is a ferry from Nelson Bay, we can stay away from the busy Princes Highway for another day, although we still have to get around Newcastle and Stockton.  It seemed to take us forever to get to Stockton and pass the loading docks for the coal and over the bridge on to the more scenic route to Nelsons Bay.

Stockton has a port where Newcastle coal is loaded.  It is a huge port area and there were at least 6 ocean going tanker ships waiting to be loaded.  We thought it quite ironic that this lonely wind turbine – promoting green energy – stood in front of mountains of coal.

Once we were over the bridge at Stockton, we were in a more rural setting with bushland and some small farming areas.  We also passed a large airbase where fighter jets were landing.

We had a quick lunch in Williamstown and carried on towards Anna Bay.  You could buy your own castle here.

There are major road works happening in this area – 4-laning the road from Bob’s Farm to Anna Bay and Nelsons Bay.  The traffic was a bit busy but most cars passed us with some space.

We arrived in Anna Bay to discover there was only a caravan park with no tent sites available.  We were told there was a camping site about 1 km away at One Mile Beach.

We are staying at One Mile Beach at an expensive site with lots of amenities for kids and families and there seems to be hundreds of the little rugrats all over the place.  At the moment they are fairly quiet, hopefully they stay that way.  One of the reasons this place is so popular with families, is this very safe beach just over the dunes from where we were staying.