Suzanne & Nic Outback Caravan Trip 2025

2nd August 2026: Awoke to a fine day, if cold! Had a shower in the unimpressive water trap with no drainage designated as the ladies’ shower room! We watched Insiders and then attended to various chores. Nic checked all our  tyre pressures.  We went to the Nambucca Heads Island Golf course for our 2 pm 9 holes game. I had watched old golf lesson video footage in the morning so I played a lot better than in Ballina. There were a number of water features which made for an interesting course, running beside the Nambucca River. There was just the two of us playing with no one in front or behind, so there was no time pressure. I scored 22 Stapleford points, really only because of my high handicap! We had a drink at the club house overlooking the Nambucca River with a sandbar in the middle home to Pelicans, gulls and cormorants!  I cooked us a Vegie pasta sauce meal for dinner followed by an early night. View from our campsite           Nambucca He...

 1stAugust 2026: Rained overnight and in the morning in Ballina. Packed up and drove to Nambucca Heads, stopping just short of Coff’s Harbour a coffee break. Our campsite is right on the Nambucca River looking out to stacked oyster crates on pontoons? harvested and waiting to be reseeded  . After setting up camp- our water leak persists and is if anything worse- we set off for the Nambucca Heads Island Golf Course. We booked a game for tomorrow at 2pm. We then drove to various view points and beaches around Nambucca Heads, in reasonably cold and bleak conditions! A shop in Woolworths updated our berries for our muesli. We went back to the campsite and I saw what I think was a black-chinned honeyeater on the mangrove in front of our van with a blue eye crest, a white breast and an olive green back.  I then cooked us another mushroom risotto. We threw out the remains of the undrinkable cask of Chardonnay bought only for risotto making! Set up Starlink and watched some ABC T...

 31st July 2026: a stay at home day of washing and cleaning for me and determinedly trying to fix a water leak in our caravan for Nic! Nic succeeded in locating the possible source of the leak but further exploration was in an inaccessible area! We hope to get professional assistance in Port Macquarie! In the afternoon we went for a lovely walk on a walking path from the caravan park along one arm of the breakwater past the Marine rescue centre to the end of the breakwater. We returned back along the breakwater but continued to walk right around Shaw’s Bay. There were beaches and mangroves and salt marshes with the principal plants being Samphire in areas subject to inundation, Salt water Couch in mid areas and Sea Rush  in the drier areas.  I cooked shakshuka for dinner using tomatoes onion zucchini beans corn and kidney beans with the last of the chilli jam, with 2 eggs nestled within! We leave for Nambucca Heads tomorrow! Our walk along the breakwater and around Shaw’s...

 30th July 2026: I have finally caught up with the blog such that I am writing it on the right day! Not that today was much to write home about! Nic and I played 18 holes of social golf at Ballina Golf club, in a mediocre fashion! They offered a free cart which we took advantage of, which was fortunate because much of the course was under repair and the route from hole to hole in a non- consecutive fashion, was tortuous! The other issue was the muddy fairways when our balls constantly acquired a mud coating needing to be removed with our one shared ball rag! The greens were quite slow, due to the amount of water in the ground and the type of grass.  When we got home we attacked one of the many annoyances in the maintenance of our caravan! There is a recurrent wet patch in the  second drawer down at a certain spot only! We needed to take out the drawers under the sink to find the plumbing! This took a lot of inline research trying to work out how to take the drawers out! F...

 29th July 2026: Left Brisbane before nine and drove to Mt Coton, where we hitched up the caravan and headed for Ballina, stopping at a wayside stop south of Tweed Heads for coffee. We reached Ballina before 2pm and set up on our beachfront ensuite caravan site, such a good site that we changed the booking to 3 nights. We  then went over to East Ballina to the golf course to book a game for the next day and then did a grocery shop at Woolworths. I cooked us a mushroom risotto for dinner, accompanied by a green salad, Ballina Caravan park Beach near our caravan Google map view of where our van is parked 

 28th July 2026: Awoke with a migraine, a rarity for me these days, which cast a pall over the day, however our washing got washed, we packed up for tomorrow and in the afternoon Mark took us to the Mount Coot-Tha Botanic gardens, founded in 1970 and opened in 1976. We had a delightful walk around the Bunya Forest trail, and around Melaleuca  Lake, on the Australian Native Plant trail. We shopped at Toowong shopping centre after a trip to a fish shop where I bought a baby barramundi which I mistake thought looked the best of not a great selection of fish. We did the barramundi in foil in the oven stuffed with lemon slices and lime sliced, accompanied by baby kipfler potatoes and salad followed by raspberries and cream washed down with a French Chardonnay. The barramundi was very disappointing, tasting muddy, with soft flesh.                      Lake Melaleuca                  ...