Karuah, NSW

Made it down to Karuah by lunchtime mostly because it’s all dual carriageway / divided road from near Kempsey. I thought about going on but decided the safest option was to leave the Newcastle / Sydney scrum for a new day, besides Paul & Sue were heading our way and we could catch up and spend some time together.

Did I mention that Judy was giving me hints about fishing up in Coffs Harbour, so we went and snagged a couple of baby breams and basically fiddled about. Seeing as we were in Karuah, that has a big long jetty sticking out into Port Stephens water, we opted for another go. It was rather pleasant sitting in the sunshine, watching the activity on the water and listening to it slop, slop around the pier. Mixed catch, a baby bream and an even smaller whiting.

I braved the pool, which felt really cool, but was actually rather refreshing after the days driving. We were just thinking it must be afternoon tea time and P&S turned up, must have radar!

We spent a pleasant hour or so chatting about vans and tours and kids before heading up to the Razzle for dinner. We ate here a year or so ago and was the usual bistro tucker, fried this, hamburgered that, all with chips and free cholesterol. They surprised us by having changed to Chinese, which maybe wasn’t our first choice, but in Karuah on a Tuesday night, in the off season, it’s that or nought. More choices – ala carte or buffet. The buffet looked empty but they promised that the one chef would get around to some more stuff just as soon as they finished the takeaways. We chose the buffet and ate in dribs and drabs, but the food itslf was pleasantly tasty and in the end we all had all we could eat.