It was goodbye to Nambucca Heads and to our wonderful apartment view this morning.

After Andy’s 10km ritual run and breakfast, we packed our belongings and started the 3.5hr journey south down the Pacific Highway to Port Stephens, our most southern stop in NSW where we plan to rest up for a few days.

The journey passed relatively quickly with the aid of more Louis Theroux podcasts and countless conversations about the places we’ve visited over the last 18mths and where we’d go back to on our next adventure.

Arriving into Port Stephens brought on a spot of de ja vu, as we recounted our last visit here just prior to Xmas 2019. We headed to Shoal Bay and a walk around Tomaree Head out to the WWII Torpedo Emplacement.

On the way we magically got to see a small pod of dolphins who inhabit the bay year round.

The walk along the trailhead brought some wonderful views across the bay and more dolphins although our ability to capture them on camera evaded us.

Post a spot of beach time, we dropped in at the SBCC where we last had dinner on the 22nd Dec 2019, a very hot and humid affair which brought back happy memories of family time with Amelia.

After several days without a meal out, we decided to treat ourselves to dinner at the Nelson Bay Diggers Club. What a feast, Michelle returned to her favourite lamb roast and Andy to fish & chips!!

Having eaten well, we kept with the treating and decided to go to the cinema to watch the latest Bridget Jones movie. We can’t recall the last time we went to the pictures, but it must be almost 2yrs ago. As it turned out the film was great, nostalgic, funny, sad, magical and heartfelt.

We’ve had a really fun day, and continually feel happy and part of this wonderful country that is Australia. Over the years we often talked about moving out here, but there was always a reason not to, perhaps most importantly we had too good a life back in the UK.

Who knows what the future might bring, but we’ve loved our two lots of 3mths travelling around Oz. We will be back we are sure of that.

Anyway we’ve still got 3 weeks or thereabouts and intend to enjoy every last minute. Tomorrow we plan to hit the beach and explore Port Stephens and pay a visit to our favourite hotel, the Anchorage for dinner and drinks.