Port Macquarie Trip 2019, Days 8-10: A bit of this, a bit of that

The last three days have been mostly uneventful, comprising a lot of driving, in fact, except for…

Day 8, our last in Port

What to do with our last day? It was a bit of a challenge because we had thought of doing a whale watching tour. However, it seemed that we were in the cross-over period so, while whales were about, there weren’t so many and we have done this tour before. We also thought of (re)doing one of the lovely hinterland trips of which there are many, depending on whether you go north (say to Southwest Rocks and Trial Bay Gaol), or west (say to Ellenborough Falls and Comboyne), or south (say to Camen Haven and the lovely North Brother Mountain). But, all these involved a bit of driving and we knew we’d be driving a lot the next few days so we decided to take it easy.

Hence, we

• attended the Vacation Village regular Thursday Pancake Breakfast. While this is not so good for me, it’s a good opportunity to meet some of the other holiday-makers in the resort, particularly given the regular Saturday welcome do was cancelled for our week.
• checked out Port Macquarie’s historic Georgian-style convict-built St Thomas’s Anglican Church. Designed by ex-convict Francis Greenway, it was built between 1824 to 1828, and is not only among the oldest in Australia but is also one of the few remaining convict-built churches. The red cedar ceiling dates to the 1850s we believe, while the unusual red cedar box pews were constructed in the 1830s when the minister wanted to keep the convicts separate from the others. Apparently, soldiers armed with bayonets stood at the door of each of the convict-occupied boxes. The building is surprisingly large, and has been beautifully maintained. The brickwork is impressive, and the red cedar interior gorgeous. The flagstones for the floor, we were told, came up from Sydney as ship’s ballast.
• saw the fun rom-com movie Yesterday, which we had missed in Canberra. Who of our generation doesn’t love the Beatles, and the song “Yesterday” has special nostalgic meaning for me. I thought the film was resolved cleverly, too. You do have to suspend disbelief quite a bit, but we were on holidays and up for that!
• played more mini-golf – about which we’ll say no more since our scores were generally worse than our first day scores.
• dined at Bill’s Fishhouse + Bar, where we ate local seafood, Len the Jewfish fillet and me the whole Leatherjacket. Mine was served with a wedge of chargrilled sugarloaf cabbage! Delicious. I started off with a surprisingly hearty barramundi carpaccio, and Len a baked crab dish.

Driving, driving, driving … Windy, windy, windy

The last two days have seen us doing a lot of driving, in a lot of wind. In fact, the poor weather forecast for Australia’s southeast saw us change our homeward journey plans significantly. Instead of heading inland, as we did last year, we decided to stick closer to the coast where, although it was going to be colder than usual, that meant around 14-16°C rather than the 6-8°C that the inland routes were promising. Of course, it did mean we missed some snow!

We drove from Port Macquarie to Sydney on Friday, stopping at Unearthed at Cooloongolook for our first cuppa of the day. This is basically a covered outdoor place, so we hunkered in the most sheltered spot in a corner to drink our decent quality cuppa. We like the homeliness of this place – in style and food. (And, anyhow, who can resist stopping in a place with such a name as Cooloongolook!)

It wasn’t a lot of fun tackling the highway in the wind (70km+ gusts we believe) with all the trucks about, but we treated ourselves to a lovely meal in the Hunter Valley at Esca Bimbadgen (‘esca’ meaning ‘good food’ in Latin, and Bimbadgen ‘good view’ in the local indigenous language) as recompense. The view was wonderful, and the food was delicious, starting with a rockmelon gazpacho amuse bouche, and I had an absolutely delicious scallop carpaccio for entree.

After that it was a relatively straighforward, though still windy drive, to Sydney, where we stayed at the decent, comfortable and always friendly Ibis Hotel in Thornleigh, which has a little in-house cafe that served our needs.

Today, Saturday, we skirted around Sydney and then headed southeast to the coast, hitting it (figuratively speaking) around Bulli, and detouring north a bit to see the famous Seacliff Bridge (built 2004-5). Unfortunately it’s very difficult to photograph, but we did enjoy driving across it in both directions, and walking across a small section of it.

Then it was a slowish southern trip though many coastal towns to Mollymook, with a short stop at Gerringong’s Sea Vista cafe for lunch. We love how on these coastal roads and highways you very rarely see the coast. It was therefore lovely to see the sea while we were eating lunch!

The day ended with our final special meal of the holiday – Len’s choice, a place he’s being wanting to go to for some time, Rick Stein’s at Bannister’s in Mollymook. Not only did we have a very lovely meal, but we enjoyed talking with our server from Barcelona (albeit she’s been in Australia for 10 years now.) My stand outs from the night were my swordfish ceviche with chilli and kafir lime entree, and a very interesting after dinner drink, a chilled sweet black vermouth (from Casa Mariol, Spain). Len loved his Indonesian seafood curry main, and his honey pannacotta dessert.

And tomorrow, back up the mountain to home sweet home.