My Holiday. by Karen Kitto

We left Loxton 9.30am Tues 5/9, had lunch at the nice bakery at Mildura, and checked into motel at West Wyalong about tea time. We went to the Club and had chinese tea, back to the very basic motel (what can you expect for only $50?!) and slept early ... was a long day! Left about 8am Wed and headed east .... Dad very ably found the Cumberland highway and sort of skirted round Sydney, and we got to a little place called Blacksmiths Beach, south of Newcastle late afternoon. Set up our tent in a lovely caravan park there, had our usual little tin of tuna, with beetroot, grated cheese, little toms, cucumber etc for tea, then went for a walk. Lovely little town, smell of the sea in the air, and it was very calm and very pleasant ... and we were delighted to be in our tent - felt like we were really finally on hols! Was another long day, so another early night, and we were woken about midnight with rain dripping on Dad's face ... and gales blowing the tent way over nearly flat, and more water finding its way in .... not a comfortable experience! We both stood holding the side of the tent, leaning into the wind, and were very grateful when it all eased soon after 1am. Not much we could do about anything then, so climbed back into bed and slept again. Think I went over to shower about 6.30 (sort of a bit silly, when I think about it ... but it was HOT water!) and the gale blew up again before I got back, so while Dad went adn had his hot shower I held the tent, adn got very scared adn sad ... was horrible! We spent the next little while just holding the tent against the wind - then decided to just get out of there! While Dad continued to hold the tent I packed everything up as quickly as I could and got everything in the car, more or less .... got absolutely saturated in the process, bare feet as i didn't have enough shoes to have any soaked! I put our table over in the laundry, as things weren't packed in properly and it didn't fit in the car, and we flattened the tent and went over to the Office. We'd booked in for two nights, and were very pleased that there was a cabin available for us to move to .... cost $85 more than the tent site (ouch!) but was necessary (and VERY nice!). We moved our gear and put on our fan heater and the air conditioner to dry everything out, took rather damp (!) self portraits ... and we had hot showers and got dry clothes on! And we laughed!! I think it was about then that Dad told me the tent was stuffed - very sad! It fined up a bit later and we went over and collected our table, then packed up the poor old very soggy sad old tent, and dragged it over to the dumpster!
That was definitely the most dramatic bit of our holiday, and I'll be happy not to do it again!
We drove up to Newcastle, took speccie photos of stormy seas, had coffee adn cake, adn looked in some camping shops. Back at cabin Dad cooked us steak and onions adn vegies for tea, adn we looked at the camping guide and tried to work out what to do next!

That might be enough for one instalment .... hope you're all doing OK! Love Mum xxx