It's that time of year again!

Tuesday, 14th May.
Wow, the year has flown by.   And once again we are setting off for Grey Nomads Camp at Stuarts Point on the north coast of New South Wales.  There's been considerable doubt as to whether I'd be well enough to go this year.  Having COPD means that I get bronchitis easily and it turns into pneumonia very quickly but this time the bronchitis stayed just bronchitis and I am on the mend, though still very limited in what I can do and still coughing badly.

If ever I wondered whether I do much in the way of preparation to go away, this time proved that I surely do.  I did of course do as much as I could over the last week or so: mainly packing away my maxi mini mess, deciding what clothes to take and making sure that the menfolk had enough of the right clothes to take too.  But poor Peter was left the task of loading everything into the caravan.  My brother has been staying in the van for a few weeks too, and we didn't have access to it to pack until this morning so that didn't help.  But usually of course I can do a lot more, plus clean the house.  This time I had to leave the house as it is - grubby because I've been out of action first with my back then with bronchitis.

We wanted to leave by midday.  Peter thought we might leave by three since it was taking so long to pack.  We ended up leaving at 5.30pm - that's probably close to a record for us.  Of course leaving so late it was getting dark.  Sunset is around 5pm and we have short twilights here in Sydney.

By a bit before 7pm we had braved the peak hour traffic through to the motorway heading north from Sydney and travelled to Wyong, where we stopped for a cooked meal.  We were there for an hour because they only did two meals instead of three and had to cook Peter's.

So it was close to 8pm when we pulled out of the service centre.  All went well for the next 3/4 hour - until Peter missed the turnoff for Taree.  That wouldn't have been an issue in itself except that night roadworks were happening and by the time we found a place several kilometres up the road where we could do a u-turn, we were stuck in head-to-tail traffic, zooming along at a whole 5 kilometres- when we were moving at all!

So after a wasted half hour we were finally back on track.

At least we were only 8 kilometres from Raymond Terrace.  Peter wanted to stop at a truck and car stop the other side, where we have stayed several times before.  I was concerned for him because it has been a long day so I was happy to stop there despite there being no power or drinking water.  Our van has 12 volt lights and we carry bottles of water.  The stove works on gas and the fridge works on either gas or electricity so we were fine.  I didn't take a photo this year so have used the one I took with my phone from last year again.  This upper area has space for about 50 b-doubles, buses and caravans and there is a smaller space below on a lower level for cars.  There are toilets but the water isn't for drinking.

Mind you, we did pass several caravan parks!  And I do miss my hot shower at night when we park where we can't connect to running water.  But we slept well.