Avoca Beach – Part 2

Wednesday 8 to Thursday March 2023

Wednesday

Anita had booked tickets for today for a trip on The Riverboat Postman, on the Hawkesbury River. We drove to Brooklyn, about an hour from Avoca, to catch the boat. When we arrived at 9:30 it was already very hot. A perfect day for a river cruise!

The three hour trip offers the opportunity to look at the Hawkesbury River and some of its more isolated outposts as it doubles up as a post boat, delivering post and packages on behalf of Australia Post.

The delivery route covers about 40km of the lower Hawkesbury River. We travelled upriver as far as Marlow Creek, stops include Dangar Island, Kangaroo Point, Milsom Island and Bar Point on the way up and Fisherman’s Point and Milsoms Passage on the way back.

This is the last remaining mail boat in operation in Australia.

On arrival we were shown to a table inside on the lower deck and had tea and an Anzac Biscuit, homemade daily to Grandma’s recipe!

On the way back after the boat trip we stopped at Saddles at Mount White, a lovely restaurant with gorgeous gardens.

We were offered a complimentary glass of Prosecco to celebrate International Women’s Day, to have with our cakes. Anita’s choice was a lamington and mine was a coconut & almond meringue with passion fruit cream. Yum! It was a great choice!

Our next stop was Bunnings garden centre in Gosford as I was interested to see the plants on sale. I was surprised to see that a high proportion of plants were familiar and can be found in garden centres in the UK.

Our final stop was at the Gosford/Edogawa Commemorative Japanese garden in Gosford. What a tranquil and beautiful place it is.

We watched more Clarkson’s Farm 2 in the evening.

29C here. This photo of home was sent to me today! It’s going to be quite a temperature difference when I get back!

Thursday

Anita has a regular get together on Thursday morning for tennis and coffee with a number of her friends. So our first stop of the day was to meet the tennis girls for coffee. They were all so friendly.

Afterwards we went to Ettalong Bay on Brisbane Water, where there was a fantastic view of the North Head and the mouth of the Hawkesbury River.

We drove to Pearl Beach and then on to Patonga to see the creek and beach.

Lunch of mussels for Anita and a delicious spicy pepperoni pizza for me at the Patonga Boat House Restaurant, sitting outside enjoying the view over the water.

Then into Woy Woy and back along coast.

We watched the final episode of Clarkson’s Farm 2. We’re both looking forward to Series 3 now!

This was our last day together as Anita leaves for Temora early in the morning to look after two of her grandchildren, while I head to Sydney ready for my return to London on Saturday.