Day 275 (Sun 8 Apr) - Newcastle, Anne's Bay

Set off towards Newcastle ( [1], [2] ), passing the pub we were at last night.

Quite weird to see very British looking roadsigns with very familiar names on them! Although we did see other signs that you don't normally find in old Blighty.

Stopped off at Nelson's Bay and then headed onto St Anne's Bay. The campsite was pretty pikey.

We were camped inbetween two sets of permanent caravans and behind us, there seemed to be a massive family cooking up half a cow. Seemed friendly enough though we double checked all our locks before venturing out.

The lady that ran the campsite said that the beach was very close and that to reach them we would have to cross some sand dunes. Apparently the largest in the Southern Hemisphere. We were unconvinced as our surroundings was very lush and green; sand dunes seemed to be the last thing that we would find.

We wandered off and soon enough we came to the edge of some vegetation to be greeted by massive sand dunes. Pretty weird! We started to climb the dunes to make our way out to the beach about a mile distant ( [1], [2] ).

As we approached the beach we noticed loads of big 4x4's being driven round at quite a high speed. Although some of them looked like tour company's offering an off road experience the majority seemed like tourists taking their brutish cars for a spin.

Got to the beach which was huge. Hardly anyone on it either.

Walked round for a bit, watching birds divebombing for food, then tried to figure out how we would find our way back over the dunes to our campsite. Sounds silly but the dunes are huge and the entrance to our campsite tiny. Jo came up with a brainwave suggesting that we could retrace our footprints. Sarb initially scoffed at this idea but was soon made to unscoff as we did indeed find our footprints that we followed back to the campsite entrance.