Three weeks till we leave, and it’s a long weekend! Yep only 3 weeks (well 2.5 by the time this is posted)!!! So we grab our last opportunity to go off in the motorhome, prior to it becoming our home for 6 months, and head down into northern NSW! We started by taking a detour in the opposite direction – heading north into Brisbane for the Camping and Caravaning show. Perhaps we’d find a better caravan or something to travel around Aus in….haha. No, we’re happy with our motorhome, so the idea of this visit was to pick up some useful info, and hopefully some items. Turns out anything solar panel or 12V related is much cheaper on ebay…. but we did get a few things – couple of chairs, head torches, leveling ramps – as well as a heap of brochures, particularly about different locations we’ll be traveling to.

After this we headed back down south, to the Mt Cotton waste transfer station (ie. the dump)!! Had to look for some free last minute essential items to kit out and decorate the motorhome with…. nah sorry, meant to say I wanted to drive over their weighbridge to see what we weighed loaded up for a trip! Turns out that with a full load of fuel and water, with the 4 of us, and all our stuff for a long weekend, we had 250kg spare till we reach the GVM (4250kg). Pretty happy with that! Sure we’ll need to throw in a couple bikes, some extra water and food, some extra tools and other things, but it looks like we’ll be a safe and legal weight when heading off around Australia.

Then it was time for some nerves, as Nicole took the drivers seat. Her nerves, not mine that is! 😉 She hadn’t wanted to drive back from the show, through the city, but jumped in at the dump and took us safely from Mt Cotton into NSW for our first night stop-over. Dad, here’s some photographic evidence that wives can drive motorhomes!!!

Nicole driving down the highway!

Well we said northern NSW, so we took the first exit after the Tweed river and headed to Fingal Heads – the NSW coastline doesn’t get any more northern than that! Came across the caravan park there and inquired about vacancies – the main area was full but there were plenty of sites ‘out the back’ in the tenting area. The bloke was concerned about the weight of the motorhome damaging his grass, so I told him it was precisely 3.94T as of one hour ago! Either he didn’t believe me or he thought that was too heavy because he still seemed uncertain (for crying out loud it is less than a loaded Landcruiser, and the grass wasn’t that good anyway!!)! We got in, and as it was getting late we set up for the night (ie. parked the motorhome!) and went for a sunset walk around the headland.

Looking to beach from Fingal Head

Looking out to Green Island

Fingal Head Lighthouse

Looking south from Fingal Head

Nicole and boys on Fingal Head

Sunset from Fingal Head!!!

After night fell we unfortunately had some noisy campers in the area, but some light rain eventually shut them up for the night! Sunday morning we went for a walk up the beach to the Tweed River and back – around 6.5km all up.

Campsite

Looking north, Fingal beach

Looking south, Fingal beach

Zoomed in to Green Island. A couple of boats of scuba divers were out there at low tide.

Birds feasting on a moving mass of small fish!

Looking north to Point Danger.

Tweed River

There were a number of surfers about, but I think Green Island messed up the waves a bit. Good fishing conditions though, with deep gutters in close to shore and lots of schools of small fish around. Sat night on the headland we even observed dolphins playing around!

Then it was time to move on, so we headed south following the coastline. Lots of caravan parks, but mostly very full. We looked at a small private and a bit dodgy looking one at Cabarita beach that we were sure was going to be cheap – but the sign on the door reckoned $70 for the night for 2 adults and 2 kids….yeah right! Moving on….

Hastings Point had a more relaxed quieter feel to it compared to the Kingscliffe and Cabarita Beach tourist centres we’d just been through, and the council caravan park had a spare spot so we pulled into there for the night. Quite a nice place, with the creek coming out to meet the ocean between the beach and the headland.

Looking out across river and ocean.

Looking north up the beach

Looking north from Hastings Point

Looking south from Hastings Point

We hung around till late Monday evening, before heading into Coolangatta for dinner at Earth n Sea, and then home. Another nice trip away in the motorhome – haven’t had a bad one yet!