Easter
long weekend featured a lot of sitting, a lot of napping, and a lot of movies
on the couch. I desperately needed that.
But
it also featured a day trip up to Bouddi National Park on the Central
Coast. I’m pretty sure “Bouddi” is
pronounced like “Booty” so I pretty much giggled whenever I said it. The Central Coast is an area north of the Sydney
Metropolitan Area but south of the next biggest city, Newcastle. The Central Coast is full of retirees and
people who wanted to buy a house but couldn’t afford one in the city so they
purchased one for a lot cheaper in the Central Coast and don’t mind sitting on
a train for 90 minutes each way every day.
I’ll
take my 8 minute walk to work, thank you very much.
The
Central Coast is also full of bogans – Australia’s answer to the redneck. If you want an idea of what the Central Coast
is like, here is a video which pretty much sums it up. If you’re not from Australia, and particular
not from the Sydney area, you’ll probably only get about 20% of what they’re
saying. I myself only get about 60%, and
I think that’s about as high as I want to go.
Ignorance is bliss.
We
spent most of our day at Bouddi National Park doing hiking trails down to a few
of the beaches. While the 92 kilometre drive
to the Central Coast takes around an hour and a half mostly on highway, it’s
just across the water from Palm Beach – which is 50 kilometres closer to Sydney
by road and less than an hour from the Sydney CBD on busy city streets. It’s because the Central Coast is separated
from the Sydney metropolitan area by Broken Bay – a large inlet of water comparable
to but probably somewhat larger than Sydney Harbour. As there is no bridge over Broken Bay like
there is over Sydney Harbour, you have to drive all the way around. It seems a bit ridiculous that we drove so
far just to end up right next to Palm Beach.
We could see the Barrenjoey Lighthouse on Palm Beach from Bouddi
National Park:
The
trip was a mini Tassie reunion as I went with Cade, Michael, and Vince. We wandered around on the beach in the sun
before heading to our next trail.
Next
up: another corner of the national park
which was the site of a shipwreck. A
monument at the park’s visitor centre memorializes the sinking of the S.S.
Maitland, which was flung onto the rocks by gale force winds in May 1898.
26
passengers perished with the ship. 114
years later, pieces of the ship actually remain on the rocks. I ventured out on the slippery surface to see
if I could find anything. Surprisingly I
did. Right there on the rocks was a
rusted out something from the ship:
I named this piece of the ship Tetanus. What a cute name. And
I’m pretty sure this may have been an anchor... or some other piece of a ship... probably:
Further
out – where it was too slippery to walk – sat a larger piece of the ship. If you look right at the middle of this
photo, you’ll see what looks like a big slab of wood sticking up from the
rocks.
That’s
a piece of the ship 114 years later.
Amazing.
We
headed up to the top of the headland to check out the views:
When
we had enough of the outdoors, we headed to the town of Avoca to check out
their popular beach, and then to a town called The Entrance for dinner in a
trashy pub. That’s real Australia. There is a renowned Mexican restaurant on the
Central Coast, but it was fully booked that night. I think we’re going to have to make another
trip.
I’ll
make sure to pack the bogan repellent.
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