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The best way to start a day on a tour — having had a good rest, and having a good breakfast. Having a good breakfast served by a wonderful host is the best. We had them all today, and coffee, of course. We caught Sam just before he left for work, and Tess for school, and El laid out a breakfast spread for us, replete with Vegamite (a very little bit goes a long way!). El and Sam, it turns out, aren’t touring cyclists, but do commute. It’s El’s parents who are the bike tourers and I jotted down their route from the Brisbane area to Newcastle that El told us they used. It included a river crossing where you had to wait for a boat to come along and flag them down for a [possible] ferry across. Dana continued the chat with El while I packed up the tent and clothes.
It was still damp and rain was threatened, so we donned our rain jackets and headed out. Unfortunately, the dampness kept everything from drying completely, but it was much better than the sopping wet mess from the night before. Today was going to be a two ferry day, but not the route that El told us about. We were going to stick closer to the coast. The first ferry is a short one across the river in Newcastle to Stockton, then 34 miles to a medium one from Nelson Bay to Tea Gardens. We weren’t sure where we were staying that night, but there were two hotels in Tea Gardens and a campground in Hawk’s Nest. I lobbied for the hotel vs. sleeping in still damp everything. But first we had to get there.
On the way to the ferry we stopped at Woolworths to restock our food supplies and struck up a conversation with Geoff, a bicycle commuter who turned out to be a touring cyclist. Later on, we found out that his wife was a Warmshowers host that I had sent a request to, but she had missed the email. She sent me a note to apologize and that’s how we made the connection.
The Newcastle-Stockton ferry was just 4 miles from El’s & Sam’s, and left every 20 minutes. Shortly after we rode away from Stockton, it started raining. Not hard, but enough to keep the rain jackets on. The highway was pretty busy, so we did a small detour past the Air Force base — just as busy, until we got to Port Stephen’s Road. Suddenly we were on quiet back roads passing mangroves and Koala refuges. And, apparently from the signage, crocs, though we didn’t definitively see any. I did, however, catch a large something diving for the water out of the corner of my eye at 12 mph! Could’ve been a croc.
We got our ferry tickets at the local visitors bureau, bought a couple of cans of beer from a distributor, and as the weather had finally cleared, settled in the park for lunch. We made our way to the ferry dock and were a bit surprised that the “original” Tea Gardens ferry really was so: a wooden boat with bench seats and no provisions for rolling anything or anyone on. We had to take off the panniers and hand the bikes to Jeremy (one of the crew) to put in the boat. It was a pleasant 1 3/4 hour trip across Port Stephens. I’d say Port Stephens Bay, but Google just notes it without the Bay part. Our captain was Gerry and we chatted with he and Jeremy most of the way. Since they hauled a lot of cyclists (including the 4 we passed on the way to Nelson Bay), they had recent info on a long stretch of gravel road we’d be riding tomorrow. “Good shape,” Jerry said multiple cyclists had reported to him. That was a bit comforting because we worried a lot about gravel stretches since our experiences on the Timber Trail in NZ. He also had info on campgrounds to check out and the hotels, of course.
On disembarking, we were right across the street from the Tea Gardens Hotel. There was also the Tea Gardens Motel which was further out of town at the golf country club. We rode there, and also across the bridge to Hawk’s Nest to check out the “campground.” Turned out to be an RV campground, so we went to the IGA, got some more provisions, and headed back to the TGH. We had a beer at the bar, got our room secured, and when we got to it, immediately unpacked and hung clothes and sleeping bags/liners up to finish drying. I put the tent and fly on a fence rail around the playground just outside our door (which was a dutch door, something neither of us had seen in a hotel). Before we had managed to make our dinner in the microwave, the power went out. Not only in the hotel, but the whole town. That changed our plan a bit, and we gathered the stove and food and headed across the street to the wharf area. We made rice & beans tortillas, a bit of wine, and by the time we were finished, the power came back on. Good thing too as it was getting dark fast. Back at the hotel, I gathered in the tent and fly lest they get wet again with dew, and we settled in to get some rest.
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