Monday to Thursday zoomed past this week, in a blur of library days, procrastination and presentations. Bleurgh. On Monday, I gave up the opportunity to go surfing at Newcastle beach in order to stay in the library. I consoled myself in the evening by splitting an entire packet of gingernuts with my favourite fake gingernut, Roseanna, and watching The Butterfly Effect (strange, disturbing, incredible) and The Inbetweeners (yeeeey).
On Tuesday, I - once again - passed up on a beach day in order to do work... No-one warned me that a Study Abroad year would require so much studying! I also managed to miss my lecture by an hour, only realising this once I had turned up and taken a seat... I noticed that the class had halved in size since last week and the lecturer was carrying books on greek mythology...
Wednesday was another work day, brightened up in the evening by chilling at Liz's with the girls. Thursday was the day of my dreaded Aboriginal Studies presentation... It went alright, I hope! In the evening there was a BBQ in King Edwards Park (again), where we gorged ourselves into oblivion (again). On the way home we heard about Coco Monde, the new chocolate restaurant on Darby St, and decided (despite our rapidly developing food babies) to give it a go. The others got an amazing Hazelnut Hot Chocolate (it tasted exactly like melted chocolate icecream) and Honeycomb Cheesecake, which was pretty beautiful. I ordered the Chocolate Gateaux and it was the MOST AMAZING THING EVER. A crumbly brownie base, then a layer of warm white chocolate and almond, topped with gooey, melty layers of white, milk and dark chocolate ganaches. It came - unlike the cheesecakes - with big chocolate spikes, raspberry coulis, chocolate icecream and a chocolate truffle. Exactly why was a mystery until the bill came ad they tried to charge me $9 extra for a large (which I did not order)... Five minutes later and I had a large for the price of a small :) Yeeey.
Friday morning was an early start, up at 7am to shower, breakfast and pack my bag for a weekend away. Hawks Nest is a small town located an hour and a half north of Newcastle, adjacent to the town of Tea Gardens (cutest town names ever?). Thanks to Groupon, our hotel was a steal, and a massive group of us descended on the town for a weekend of surf, sand and free champers on arrival. The weatherman unfortunately chose this weekend to be accurate for the first time since my arrival in Oz two months ago, meaning that Friday was a grey and rainy mess. We spent most of the afternoon warming up in the hot tub. Once the skies cleared we grabbed the free rental surfboards and set out to the beautiful Bennetts Beach to attempt to surf. It wasn't the most successful afternoon - at least not in my case - but it was a lot of fun. Without wetsuits the wind chill was ridiculous, but we managed to last an hour or so before leaving the boards with the boys and sprinting the 200m back to the hotel to dive into the hot tub, where we spent the remainder of the afternoon.
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| Not quite Blue Crush... yet. |
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| The path down to beautiful Bennetts Beach |
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| Yey warmth :) |
The arrival of the rest of the group at 5pm-ish signalled the beginning of a ridiculous 20-or-so person hot tub gathering, before a poolside BBQ. The was a thunderstorm further out in the bay so we wrapped up in blankets and spent a few hours laying out on the beach watching the lightning; it was amazing. Once the hypothermia set in, we dashed back to the hotel for urgent and copius amounts of tea and oreos.
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| Loving the beach at night |
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| The mooooon |
Saturday was sunny-ish, but very windy, Rather than risk pneumonia due to windchill from surfing, we went on a long walk along the beach. Bennetts Beach is over 30km long in total, but we only covered a fraction of it. We climbed sand dunes and discovered secret bays, climbed rocks and collected shells, watched some impressive kitesurfing and generally acted like teenagers on their first unsupervised foray into the adult world. Listening to the sea through conch shells is still fun when you're twenty.
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| :) |
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| Windy windy windy |
In the afternoon we went for a walk around Hawks Nest, consumed inadvisable amounts of biscuits and descended, once again, upon the hot tub. We found the much sought-after sauna... It resembled little more than a B&Q garden shed with heaters, but in the hour we somehow spent in there we all became sufficiently dehydrated to call for the immediate administering of large amounts of goon. For rehydration reasons, obviously.
The evening passed in a goon-aided blur of BBQs, jacuzzis and waterslides, ending abruptly when the hotel manager informed us that the pool was CLOSED and we should all run along like good little children. Boo. Rather than further pickling ourselves in the over-chlorinated water, we wrapped up like an international army of Michelin Men and headed to the beach, to camp out with a bonfire and await the sunrise. The night was cold and sleep was pretty impossible, but when you're lying on a beach in Australia watching shooting stars and listening to the waves crash on the shore, who cares? By 4am most people had abandoned the beach campfire for the warmth of their beds. Sunrise was at about 5.45am so at 4.30am I headed back with Josh and Anna for emergency tea and timtam slams. We re-insulated ourselves in our hobo blankets and hats, and headed back to the beach to find Nathan and Roseanna just in time for sunrise. It was absolutely beautiful, and completely worth the sleep deprivation. Best moment in Australia so far.
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| Beach campfire |
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| Survivors photo - 6am! |
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| So worth the cold. |
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| Gorgeous! |
Sunday morning passed in a rush of powernaps, cleaning and goosebumps on the (chilly) ferry ride to Port Stephens. It got a bit choppy at times - kudos to the hungover ones for not vomming. From Port Stephens we walked to Shoal Bay, a town with a beautiful white-sand-and-turquoise-water bay. The sea was completely still - no surfing here - but unfortunately no swimming either as the wind was just too, too cold. Pff. Instead we lazed on the beach, headed to 'Aussie Bob's Fish and Chip Shop' on the recommendation of a nice old man, and generally perfected the art of Doing Nothing.
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| Beautiful Shoal Bay |
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| Gorgeous turquoise water :) |
Eventually the time came for the bus, so we hauled ourselves off the beach and onto the bus for the 90 minute journey back to Newcastle and reality. We passed over the bridge and saw the towering structures of the coal mines; it wasn't the prettiest sight after the beauty and isolated charm of Hawks Nest and Shoal Bay.
The next two weeks are going to be busy and stressful, with deadline after deadline, but this weekend definitely got me excited for Brisbane. Hawks Nest was the perfect pre-spring break break. I would go back in a heartbeat.
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