Robert's Travels

We woke up to the sounds of cockatoos outside our window shortly after 7:00. We both had a fantastic sleep, and so we felt very refreshed as we got up, got cleaned up, and had breakfast with Jeff and Marilyn. They had offered to show us around the Newcastle area, and shortly before 9:00 we got into their car and began our day. We started by driving into Newcastle itself, a trip that took about half an hour or so. As we were getting into the downtown core we caught a glimpse of their new LRT line, which went into service earlier this year. This LRT was notable as it had a pantograph but there was no overhead caternary - the train car was powered by a large capacity battery that recharged itself at each station vs. drawing it’s electricity through a caternary system. I thought this was pretty ingenious, and it was cool to see in operation!

As we drove through downtown Newcastle we got a view of the historic buildings in the area, along with a number of new buildings being constructed along the waterfront. We took a nice drive along the coast, seeing Nobbys Beach and Newcastle Beach. We got out at the Strzelecki Lookout and took a stroll along the Anzac Memorial Walkway, however it was quite windy so we didn’t stay on the walkway for too long before turning back. We then went to Fort Scratchley, an old military fort built into the side of the hill that overlooks Nobbys Beach and the Newcastle harbour. Here we were granted fantastic views of Newcastle, though the strong winds persisted and we weren’t able to spend too much time without being worried about being blown away. We returned to the car, and drove back through the downtown. We were able to get glimpses of the coal terminals loading up the large ships that had docked in the harbour, getting ready to carry the coal mined in the Newcastle area out to China, India and other places in the world.

We then turned away from Newcastle and began driving towards the Hunter Valley wine region northwest of Newcastle. As we drove I dozed a little bit, and about 30 minutes later we arrived in the wine-growing region. We passed a number of small wineries on our tour, seeing large numbers of grape fields growing in the rolling countryside. We eventually stopped at one, where we did a small wine tasting before having a light lunch. We continued on our way, driving through more of the countryside while Jeff told us about the region and his family’s history in the area. We saw some smaller towns on our tour, including Cessnock and Toronto (!!), before returning back home. We got back around 14:30, then had a snack of cake and coffee before taking a small nap in the afternoon.

We left the house shortly before 17:00 and drove to visit Jeff and Marilyn’s daughter, Dana, along with her husband and two daughters. We had heard a lot about Dana and her family from Todd’s sister Katie, who had spent several months visiting Australia years before and had gotten to be friends with Dana during her stay. We arrived at their house, met the family, and then had a nice chat while Dana got dinner ready. We were served some delicious homemade pizza, which we enjoyed. The children ate before us, and were playing as we ate, however as the meal went on they started to get bored and so they came to join us at the table. The younger daughter took a liking to me and we played peek-a-boo as dinner was winding down. Dana put the children to bed shortly after dinner, and we had a nice visit until her husband came home, just after 20:00. We stayed for a brief chat and then went back to Jeff and Marilyn’s house, where we watched the news and chatted until bedtime.