Port Stephens 27 March to 11th April 2006

Well finally the time has come for us to get away for a short time and try out our much awaited Motorhome. This Motorhome as per our conversion story has been a long time coming. We decided that our first trip would only be a short one for more reasons than I wish to explain, but never the less we were looking forward to it. I was very pleased with my trip home from Ipswich and was looking forward to driving it again especially now that it has all our travel belongings in it and would have a little bit more weight than before. I wanted to see how it handled as I had never driven a large vehicle with air suspension before (other than my trip home with it) and wanted to see how it handled now with even more weight. I did not notice any difference in its handling and even though it sways a bit when going slow it seems to stop doing this at higher speeds. All went well and we arrived at our destination and returned home again without any issues in the mechanical side of things anyway.

Well back to our trip, as this was our first trip away in our Motorhome and it was just going to be a short trip and only for 2 weeks, we decided we would use this trip to not only allow us some time away but to also use it to find out what we needed and what we didn't.

Our "Port" of call (pun intended) was Port Stephens. This is a lovely place on the east coast about 2.5 hours drive North from Sydney. The small but lively shopping centre is located (in decimal degrees) S32 43.240 E152 08694. There are a few Camping grounds or Tourist Parks scattered throughout this area and as far as I am aware all owned and run by the Port Stephens Council. We stayed at the Halifax Tourist Park in Port Stephens, this park is situated on Beach Road and as it allows dogs out of the school holiday periods we were able to take our 2 girls with us. It is a great spot on the peninsula, Fly Point with an "ocean beach" on one side and the bay on the other. The "ocean beach" is actually an inner beach opposite the headlands to Port Stephens so gets some small waves for the body-boarder to ride. They do not have many spots available for big-rigs and the spot we were in would be the only spot you could get 11mtrs in, luckily we are only 10. They have several electric BBQs around the place and we had 2 available just behind us. When cooking or just eating outside you get a visit from very cheeky Kookaburras who if you are not careful will help themselves to your food. There are also friendly Ducks, Galahs and Lorikeets, plus every evening and morning there were rabbits around the MH eating the grass. As I have not yet had the towbar fitted to our Motorhome and as we live only about 1.5 hours from this spot we had our daughter Tiffany tow the Vitara up on the Gypsy trailer behind the Pajero and she brought our Grandson Lachlan with her for the first day of our stay. The following weekend she came up again with our grandson and and our Nieces daughter, Jessica. We found this Park to be a great Family oriented Holiday Park. All our neighbours were exceptionally friendly, some had their dogs with them and an older couple staying in one of the cabins brought their bird along with them and were able to keep it in a cage on the veranda around the cabin. The weather was great except for 2 days, when we had rain and a lot of wind, the rest of the time it was sunny and reasonably calm. The rain storm that hit us was in the first week on the site and it was about 1AM in the morning and unfortunately it came down that hard that our awning buckled under the weight of the water that could not get away quick enough. The lower arms of the awning buckled completely and the roller ended up bent, but luckily not enough to stop me from being able to wind it up and hold it to the side of the Motorhome. The vinyl also copped it and stretched. We also had both roof vents leak and I was able to remove the inside covers to allow me to at least get to them and minimise the amount of water coming in, the rear window leaked again and it did this prior to me taking the bus home from Koolah Fittouts, but they could not find the problem, it had also leaked after raining on my return home with the MH the first time, then just stopped leaking. I'm assuming now that this leak has to do with the angle the MH is sitting and will need to investigate this further. The roof will obviously need fixing and I will be attempting to get some time soon to do it, until then and while I'm now back home I have a cover over the roof. I expected some problems, but was hoping for less than I got. As I said after the rain the rest of the time there was great and very relaxing, just not long enough. We drove around and looked at a few sites including the old Nelson Head Lighthouse, this is called an inner lighthouse as it is situated on Nelson Head which is inside the bay. Nelson Head is just above the Halifax Park and there is a photo taken from our motorhome looking up at this building. The old lighthouse is now a museum, a tearoom and houses the Coast Guard as well. We also tried to go and look at the wreck of the Sygna on the beach out from Stockton, but unfortunately I got so bogged in the Vitara that after being towed back out decided I'd wait and take the Pajero next time as the Vitara did not have enough ground clearance for the extremely soft sand. The last weekend we were there, it was a weekend of fishing boats, the Park was booked out solid and the fishing comp that was on is an annual affair and this one was for trailer boats only, very busy weekend with lots of people everywhere. All in all this trip was good, both for a time away and for testing our new MH. Both Paula and myself enjoyed ourselves just plain relaxing and getting the Girls used to sitting in the MH by themselves for short periods. We have found some things we would change if doing it again but on the most part it is set-up good for us. Not sure when our next trip will be but will keep this site updated.

I have taken some general photos of this trip and you will be able to view them below.

Thanks

Ian, Paula and the Girls.