Toowoon Bay on the Central Coast of New South Wales is where we spent our Christmas break this year, which is only about an hours drive down the F3 freeway from our place.

We had booked an ensuite site for eight nights from the 2nd of January. It was raining when we left home around 10.30am on the Saturday morning, as we got closer to our destination the weather fined up long enough for us and a few others who had arrived at the caravan park the same time as us to get our vans and annexes set up before the rain came down again.

We nearly always find when caravanning that we meet friendly people as we have once again, not long after we had arrived Barrie and Eileen from Sydney arrived and set up on the site next to ours, it wasn’t long before a conversation was struck and the alcohol flowed well into the night as we got acquainted with our new friends and their dog Pip.

It had rained for most of the first tree days we were there with only a break every now and then; we took some time for a drive around the area and did a little bit of shopping, some reading and some drinking.

Finally on the Tuesday it was nice and sunny we woke early and were keen to be able to have a good walk before breakfast. When we went outside the van it was a nice fine day there was even a bit of dew on the cars making it a beautiful morning. We headed out of the caravan park and headed south past a golf course, this road led us to the access to Shelly Beach. We decided to walk back along the beach which was quiet enjoyable with a lot of people surfing, walking there dogs as there is an allocated area on the beach for taking your dogs and lots of people just enjoying the morning walk. I think most people were like us waiting for nice weather to be able to get out.

The Caravan Park (Toowoon Bay Holiday Park) we stayed at was pet friendly so people were able to bring their dogs, there were quite a number of pets in the park. We haven’t stayed in a park before that allows animals but it hasn’t been a problem at all, it was actually quite amusing at times with the odd dog fight with the owners frantically trying to separate them.

There was a Christian group who had set up camp on the grounds next to the Caravan Park and at 9.30am everyday they came around the park offering lots of activities for children, apparently they have been doing it for 50 years.

Wednesday was hot and a bit windy, we went for our morning walk and we found it a bit of an effort especially when walking back from the beach and walking up the steep stairs, we couldn’t wait to get back to our van and have breakfast and to be able to sit and relax. We spent most of the day reading and on the laptops. The caravan park had a Wi-Fi internet connection, however we were just on the fringe of the coverage area so we had to use our own wireless broadband. We have a small network setup in the caravan so we can use both our laptops on the internet simultaneously.

We do not watch a lot of television when we are away so we utilise one of the laptops and a usb HDTV receiver for our TV. It cost about $80 and it works well, or at least until we set it up at Toowoon Bay. We spent hours trying to get a good reception without to much success. When we got home I found a broken connection in the TV aerial connection on the outside of the caravan.

Thursday morning it was overcast and we were getting very light showers of rain. We had breakfast and as the rain had stopped so we decided to go for our morning walk, the sand dunes and steps were still hard to climb when leaving the beach. The weather was still ordinary so we decided to visit Norah Head to see the lighthouse .The views there were beautiful even though we didn’t go in the lighthouse we took photos (photos posted in the gallery on this website) and there were a lot of people on the rocks below either fishing or just having a wander around. We drove around to see what else Norah Head had to offer, there was a caravan park not far from the beach. It looked as though the beach there must become quiet busy as there were a lot of car parking areas.

We headed back to Toowoon Bay via Wyong, had some lunch at Tuggerah then looked at some nice new Coromal caravans at a dealership. It’s quiet surprising what is fitted in some of theses new caravans and we hope when we set off travelling for weeks at a time we will be able to update to one that has a bathroom, mainly for convenience more than anything. We then enjoyed sitting around in the afternoon and evening having a drink and a laugh with our friendly neighbours.

Friday was much the same as our previous days spent walking on the beach, eating, drinking and chatting the weather had finally come good. Our new friends next door had some old friends who live nearby over for dinner, we tried to stay out of their way but they found us and insisted we join them as they were going home the next day.

Saturday we awoke to a hive of activity with lots of people madly packing up their caravans, annexes and tents to head home. Out of the eight ensuite sites there were only two of us that did not leave on the Saturday, we were staying until the Sunday and the other people were staying another week. We said our good bye’s to our new friends next door and waved them off. We had some friends coming down to see us for the day on Saturday and to our surprise they had booked a cabin at the other end of the park for the night save driving home in the dark. We took the opportunity to take down our annex while it was dry and just left the rollout awning out on our caravan.

It got really hot on the Saturday so we spent the afternoon on our friends cabin’s balcony in the shade. When we returned to our caravan to have a barbecue with our friends we were quite shocked, every site was once again occupied, the area was a hive of activity and there were kids and dogs running everywhere. We could not believe how two Saturday afternoons could be so different, the Saturday we arrived it was raining and everyone was inside their vans and annexes. We don’t know if we would have survived another week. Caravan Park etiquette had gone out the window this day. The people behind us had helped themselves to about 1.5M of our site and the pegs holding the ropes on their bed flies were actually in the ground under the back of our caravan. We had kids riding bikes across our annex pad under our awning and a dog tried to savage me when I walked past one of the new arrivals vans. As it turned out there were about 4 families holidaying together occupying various ensuite sites.

The new campers in our area partied until about 11.30pm. We were up early Sunday morning had some breakfast rolled up the awning and dropped the poptop on the caravan. We had to back the Landcruiser up to the caravan at an angle so we could get the turn to get it out of the tight space it was now in. We were able to drive through across the site behind us when we had arrived eight days before, it may have been easier if old mate behind hadn’t pinch all of our remaining area behind our van as we could have reversed the van back a couple of metres and got enough swing to get it out. All was good although it makes it a little difficult installing load levellers etc when your vehicle is at 45deg to your caravan.

A short trip up the F3 freeway and we were home by 10.00am.

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