I had thought that Port Macquarie was situated at Lake Macquarie which is just south of Newcastle in New South Wales. However, I soon discovered that it was in what they call the Mid North Coast. About ten years ago we had spent a lovely weekend at Lake Macquarie, riding our bikes and exploring the area. For some reason I had wanted to go to see Port Macquarie and Bev had decided it was a good place to go for a road trip.
Port Macquarie is around 360 kilometres north of Sydney. We had been booked to stay in luxury cabins at a place called Little Palms Cabin at Lake Cathie (pronounced Cat-eye). Apparently this is to differentiate it from other places which are spelt Catti. How you get Cat-eye from Cathie is beyond me.
The trip to Lake Cathie is along the Pacific Highway a motorway that goes from Sydney to Brisbane as far as I can tell. Otherwise it isknown as A1. It is a bit like our expressways and is a continuation of the M1 from Sydney to Newcastle. Having just driven from Auckland to Wellington the only comparison of the quality of the road are the motorways south of Auckland and north of Wellington. It makes driving easy and much safer. Much of the road goes through eucalypt forest and avoids the numerous little towns and villages that dot the coastal strip.
We stopped for some lunch at a rest stop about halfway to Lake Cathie. It was a random stop but a fortunate one as there was a coffee cart there to sate our coffee addiction while we ate the baguette, we bought in Pymble.
Lake Cathie is a little village ten minutes south of Port Macquarie. The cabin in which we are staying is very cute. After arriving and unpacking the car we went for a walk to beach. It is one of those beaches that often feature in advertisements for Australia, long and golden framed by a deep blue sea and dunes. We were surprised that there was no one swimming there but it was late afternoon so that was perhaps the reason.
Our cute little cabin
Nearby our cabin is a pub and supermarket. Bev thought that the fruit was considerably cheaper in that supermarket than in Sydney, perhaps the result of property being so much cheaper up here. Although, the prices of houses were still just under a million dollars and some well over.
We had a drink on our little veranda and then we headed to the local pub for a meal. It was in true Aussie style a big barn of a tavern and reminded me of the Hillcrest Tavern in Hamilton of my youth. We ordered our meal and then waited and waited. Eventually after about forty minutes I went up to the kitchen to find where our meal was.
“We were inundated with orders,” I was told.
“How long will it be as we have been waiting for a long time now?” I asked.
“About 10 minutes!”
Bev continued to entertain me while I quietly thought about the next move. After twenty minutes and no food we decided Bev might be a better person to go up and ask so off she goes to be told the same as me and that it was about 2 minutes away! Humph I said when she told me that and I estimated it would be about ten to fifteen minutes. Fifteen minutes later I decided I would go to the people who took the money and complain. Just as I was walking there the buzzer thing went notifying me that the meal was ready. Sure enough it was there. We were about the last to be served, over an hour and a half later after placing our order.
Remarkably the food was quite good for pub food.
I commented that as we walked back to our cabin how warm it was - a soft almost tropical warmth which had me worrying about sleeping but I crashed out easily.
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