We arrived at Port Macquarie early evening. Port Macquarie has a population of about 36,000. That may not seem big to you, but it’s big enough to make it 40th in the list of Australia’s largest towns and cities.
We had chosen Port Macquarie simply because it was about halfway between Yamba and our destination for tomorrow, Sydney. Because it is a larger town, there were so many things we didn’t get to see. It has beaches, but we didn’t see any. But the town backs on to the Hastings River which we did see. First in the evening…..
Hastings River Port Macquarie
Then we went back the following day…..
Hastings River Port Macquarie
Hastings River Port Macquarie
We were already beginning to realise that we had probably been a little ambitious regards the amount of ground we were going to cover in just two weeks. There was so much to see and do here, but we were already booked into a Best Western in Sydney for tonight.
Given more time we would have liked to have checked out the beaches, there are 9 in Port Macquarie and another 6 close by, perhaps taken a trip down the river, visited Wauchope to check out the blackbutt forest, done a little four wheel driving around the Hinterland and who knows? I might have taken the wife shopping. (Just kidding).
But for us, part of the thrill of this trip was to see as much of Australia as we could. We do amend that slightly, as you will see. I’ll explain that a little later on in the holiday. Besides, I still had plenty of the lovely M1 left. Why waste time seeing the sights when I could be burning rubber?
Just by the river at the end of the town centre, was a large tree. It offered shade for the local office workers to sit under whilst they ate their lunch. It’s Australia’s equivalent of grabbing a sandwich from M & S to take back to the office, because it’s the only dry and warm place you can find to sit. They just have different “dry and warm” areas, and more of them.
Lunch at Port Macquarie
We had our lunch here too, then jumped back in the car to head for Sydney.
