Thursday April 24, 2014

Up early and away by 8:00 am to catch the ferry from Nelsons Bay to Tea Gardens.  It was a lovely ride to Nelsons Bay, fairly flat then a couple of hills to get into Nelson Bay.  The temperature at 9:00 was 19 degrees and sunny.  Today was fraught with problems.

Problem number one – no directions at all to the ferry.  We eventually found it and tried to get on the next ferry at 10:15 – was not allowed on this ferry as it is too small to take the bicycles.  The next ferry was at 11:15. We had a two hour wait.

I was chatting to a couple of older guys who I told you see so much from a bike.  Not sure how I missed seeing this coming into Port Stephens.

This is Dutchmans Bay next to Nelson\’s Bay.

Problem number two – everything had to be removed from the bikes and the bikes had to be lifted on to the roof of the boat!! The little green boat is the same kind of boat that we had to lift our bikes on to.

When we got to Tea Garden we headed out towards the Myall Lake National Park.  It was a lovely ride all the way to the next ferry from Bombah Point.

When we crossed the lake on the cable ferry, we carried on the Bombah Point Road towards Bulahdelah, it was a rough gravel road.

Problem number three – 16kms of gravel road really tough on the hands.

Due to our delayed start we got into Bulahdelah at 4:00.  It gets darks by 5:30 now. There didn’t appear to be any camp sites here, so we opted for a motel. We also opted to go to the local pub for dinner.  On our way back we passed the RSL Hall – which had an ANZAC display.  We went in and looked at the display.  A group of volunteers had put together a display of local families that had served at Gallipoli and other wars.  We also found out the dawn service is at 6:00 am at the cenotaph.  The cenotaph is almost next door to the motel.  I plan on getting up early to go to the service.

I wanted to be in a small town to commemorate ANZAC day and I don’t think I could have picked a better town.