The New South Poettckers: Newcastle and New Friends

Kevin and I decided a while back that we would try to plan a weekend away every other weekend, as long as we were all feeling up to it. We suited ourselves up with camping gear (with the help of some borrowed gear from our exchange partners) to make this plan more affordable. There are so many state and national parks, as well as holiday and caravan parks, that our options are quite numerous in terms of new places to explore that are not too far away. I think that this is a great plan, so far. Of course, packing up the car every other weekend may get a bit old after a number of months, but until then, we will enjoy our affordable getaways. This weekend, we chose to head to the beach - Blacksmiths Beach near Newcastle (about a 4 hour drive from us) - and stayed at a holiday park. We invited some fellow Canadian exchangees (from London, ON living near Forster, NSW for the year) to join us on our adventure. We all had a fantastic weekend of connecting with new friends who felt like old friends, and enjoying a gorgeous Australian beach (seriously, are there any non-amazing beaches here???).

Some highlights:

waves, waves, waves - jumping over them, crashing through them, ducking under them, riding on top of them, being knocked around by them
flying foxes everywhere - they are so cool to watch at night
falling asleep to the sound of crashing waves
falling asleep to the crash of thunder
watching our kids connecting with other kids
watching our kids falling in love with the ocean - Calla took a little while to warm up after a face full of sand but warm up she did, for Rylan it was love at first wave, and Joey was happy to play in the sand and the waves

Photos of highlights (I forgot our camera, so my phone had to do this time):

Did we make a wrong turn somewhere!?

Lots of tag was played at the playground.

We make sure to follow the rules and swim between the red and yellow flags where the lifeguards are watching. It's quite easy to wander outside of these flags in search of the most fun waves.

Beginner body surfing.

I focused on Calla to start, then caught Rylan and Kevin catching a good one. This old mama caught some good ones too, but nobody likes to catch the mama bear on camera. :)