Laurieton

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Day 9: Laurieton to Coopernook

Distance: 68K
Weather: warm

Mozzies weren’t the only problem yesterday – the 3/4G was very poor too, so we decided to go into Laurieton and sit in a park for a while and get our internet fix, and maybe an occasional coffee and something gooey at the cafe.

Before going in though we checked out the camping areas in Crowdy Bay NP with view to going there tonight. The first was just like a caravan park, even had kerb and channeling and, of course, lots of caravans. The other one was also not appealing as you couldn’t see the beach and the scrub looked like great mozzie breeding grounds – once bitten, twice shy (though it was more than once!)

brekkie

Breakfast with a view – North Haven

We got a very pleasant surprise in Laurieton when another Trakka Jabiru 4×4 pulled in beside us. Jean-Claude and Veronique purchased theirs about 6 months ago and are building a ‘home base’ in the local area. As soon as that’s built their plans for travelling Australia are similar to ours. We’ve exchanged contacts and hope we’ll share some adventures with them in the future.

jc and steve

Boys and their toys.

We decided to head to Coopernook where we’d stayed on our previous trip – a good, mostly quiet, free camp behind the Coopernook pub where we arrived just on dark.

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Day 8: Wollomombi to Laurieton

Distance: 309K
Weather: low 20s
Refuelled: Wauchope – 130.9c/L

After farewelling Bryan and Trish who were heading home we continued southward via Armidale, the pretty and historic Uralla where we stopped for morning tea, Walcha and on to Tia Falls where we stopped for lunch and did the short walk to the falls. These falls are quite impressive with a good flow of water – must be outstanding when the district has had good rainfalls.

tia gorge

All these gorges are quite outstanding.

Tia_Falls

Tia Falls – not quite so far to walk to see this one.

From here we drove down, and down, and down the range (wish I’d thought to count the number of hairpin bends!), around a 1000 meter drop to Wauchope. This is a drive we both enjoyed, though as the driver at the time I was pretty exhausted by the time we got to sea level.

We decided to stay at the beach tonight so booked into the Diamond Waters Caravan Park, just south of Laurieton and north of Crowdy Bay National Park. This caravan park is at the waters edge and we were allotted a shady site on lush grass just a stone’s throw from the water. Lovely spot – only one problem … MOSQUITOES!! We went for a walk down to the jetty and around the caravan park, which has a lot of permanents in cabins and vans, followed by a quick drink outside before the mozzies chased us in. Spent an unhappy night swatting mozzies that had managed to get into the van.