Now we just need to find a Bencove....

June is full of commemorative dates for us. Both birthdays, plus Ben's well planned proposal in Seville. Last year we added another few significant dates - our wedding anniversary and our Australian arrival. With all these Dates of Note so closely packed, we decided to take advantage of the June public holiday weekend (no Jubilee celebrations for us, but we do get her majesty's birthday off each year) to head North. 
We've not been north before except in aeroplanes to Queensland so were looking forward to seeing some of New South Wales, north of Sydney. Location and accommodation were selected by Ben under his own initiative whilst I was back in Europe. Just thought he would like that recorded.
We didn't get off to the best start. An unintentionally merry evening with Ben's work colleagues on Friday night, meant we didn't quite make the 8am start we intended. It was more like midday by the time we joined the hideous snaking queue of traffic heading out of Sydney. 

Leaving Sydney via the Harbour Bridge

A series of bad decisions or sheer bad luck saw us making numerous gaffes around which direction was best and where to stop for food. A detour via Gosford was a particularly dark period in the journey as we sought lunch. I'd never even entered a KFC before and all my opinions were confirmed. I don't think even Ben enjoyed it on this occasion, looking at my sour and doleful face tucking into the 'salad special' - an iceberg lettuce, carrot strands and a cherry tomato. Go Greenpeace I say. 
After that things improved enormously - we turned off the highway after Newscastle and drew into Anna Bay. I was hoping my namesake town wouldn't be disappointing. And phew!!! We pulled up the car and stumbled up a sandy path through the sand dunes to find a stunning deserted beach that was simply breathtaking in the late afternoon light......

After watching the sunset we headed to our little bolthole in the nearby gum trees and spent the evening cooking some food and enjoying some of the wine we'd over ordered from our Barossa valley trip. 


The next day saw a fun packed list of activities:

Riding a camel. Anna Bay has some of the largest sand dunes in the Southern Hemisphere

We climbed a summit and saw a humpback whale from the top

Found another stunning and deserted beach

Moved some flotsam

Were happy

And some of us got very wet feet