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In the morning, we got to meet Amy’s & Harry’s three adorably cute children, Ferg, Ada, & Edith! We shared breakfast with them while they readied themselves for the day. Ferg was soon to be off to school, and Ada stayed and entertained us with songs and stories while Amy took Ferg to school. Edith isn’t quite there yet as she’s just about 5 months old, but we can imagine she’ll be just as animated and smart.

We hung our clothes out on the line to soak up what the sun could muster and I worked on the bikes, cleaning and lubing them and trying to find the source of the noise in my drivetrain. It was totally quiet — so no idea why it was acting up yesterday.

We said our goodbyes and thanks to Amy and got a late start at 11. We’re heading to another Warmshowers host, this time with a “help yourself, don’t even need to send a request” campground. His only request was to “stop at the house and say ‘Hi’.”

We followed the Pacific Highway most of today, but alongside rather than on it. Most of the way. We stopped for groceries at Aldi’s in Coff’s Harbour and had lunch at a picnic table near a playground in this huge mall complex, used the facilities, then returned to our trip north. We made our way through neighborhoods until we got to what was probably the worst looking hill we’d seen yet — and that’s saying a lot. Probably 18% grade for 1/8 mile or more. It was going to take us to the Pacific Highway eventually, so I suggested we just go back and get on the highway as we’d had pretty good luck with it so far. Well, not a great decision, as the highway had to traverse the same bluff, and had very narrow shoulders — I rode in the drainage ditch for a while — and a lot of traffic. One of the consequences of real-time rerouting, because when I was reviewing the route for this post, I saw that there was a perfectly nice trail on the other side of the highway that would have gotten us past the most dodgy section. Oh, well. We survived.

Our next stop was the Moonee Beach Hotel (once we found it) to stop and get a quick charge since our phones were both on the edge due to our late start, and as a bonus, get a couple of beers on this very hot day. That was the last picture we took tonight as we got back on the highway to finish our ride and got to the “campground” just before dusk. We found the kitchen and unloaded our food and I started to make rice while Dana went for a shower. Oddly, there was a half-cooked dinner on the stove and prep area and we soon were joined by Tom, who was completely surprised to see us there. He wasn’t aware we were coming as we followed Paul’s directions just to “come on down.” Paul and his partner weren’t home, Tom explained, but they had stopped advertising the place as an Airbnb and retreat.

Tom was, to say the least, a bit odd at first, but eventually, he warmed up to us and started talking about how he got there, where he worked, his daughter many miles away in Darwin and more. He finished cooking his dinner and we ate together over this conversation. After dinner, he went to his hut, Dana dragged a hammock out so she could sleep under the stars, and I opted for another building where there weren’t any mossies (mosquitoes, in Australian!). There was also a solar powered charging station, so we got our devices topped off while we slept.