8th January 1992 Day 172

The Diary
Still stuck in Coffs Harbour. The weather took a turn for the worse. Even English beach bums like ourselves couldn't lay on the beach. Reminds me of Whitby or Scarborough but infinitely less exciting. "What's that you say Skippy?", "Ah, yes. Seaton Carew".

2012
I obviously wasn't enjoying Coffs much. And I've never been back.


Seaton Carew - my local seaside "resort" when I was growing up. It's difficult to describe how grim it is. It gets a mention in "The Kingdom by the Sea" by Paul Theroux. Not a complimentary mention. I did get into Paul Theroux on this trip - The Great Railway Bazaar should be read by everyone travelling through Asia by train.

As far as I know Seaton Carew's only claim to fame is the "Canoe man". 


Is it raining in Seaton Carew?

7th January 1992 Day 171

The Diary
Oz and Beth went to the Big Banana despite warnings. I went to the water slide where they met me later on. Lots of sunbathing, zinc cream for the nose and new sunglasses. Beth cooked a spag bol, jolly good, but more inferior Aussie ingredients i.e. black and gold spaghetti.

And that was about it. Dullsville, Arizona or what?


2012
I think we were struggling to get on a bus to head further north - loads of backpackers hit the road from Sydney after Xmas. I was bored and wanted to be back in Sydney.


And for the original usage of Dullsville, Arizona, try here

6th January 1992 Day 170

The Diary 

The Big Banana

Back to Muttonbird Island for some photo opportunities. Oz and Beth went sunbathing and Andy and I went to the Big Banana - about as exciting as the Manneken Pis and twice as far away in the heat. A long walk back to town and more fun and games with Andy's bus ticket. He was booked on a bus on 6th Feb not 6th Jan. We managed to re-arrange it for 3:30am. Now he has an almost direct bus to Melbourne (3 hours rest in Sydney) and then on to a flight home via Athens. That's arriving Athens at 3am and leaving at 12 noon! In his own words "I should have booked it earlier". 


Time for Mexican and 10 pin bowling in the evening at an ancient Brunswick Alley. Andy won 2 games but I won the third with the night's best score of 163 but Andy and Beth were close behind with a couple more stonking scores. Had a drink in the local pub, chatted to a local called Danny and then escorted Andy to the bus stop. Left him about 12:30am. Wonder what time he got away?

2012
The Manneken Pis - a world famous but very underwhelming tourist attraction that we'd trudged through Brussels to find a few years earlier. File along with the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen.

The Manneken Pis

Andy's bus trip was a saga in itself. My recollection is that Andy flew from UK to Australia and landed in Melbourne. He then caught a train to Sydney and armed with only part of our address he tracked us down to our unit in Lane Cove (remember - no email, facebook or mobile phones to help him).  During his stay he decided he would travel to Coffs Harbour with us for a few days before going back to Melbourne to catch his flight. That's 1,570 km or almost 1000miles. For some reason it took several hours in the travel agent in Sydney to book the bus ticket in the first place and then we discovered the return date was wrong. The agent probably assumed no-one would travel 660kms from Sydney to Coffs and then less than 48hrs later travel 1,500kms in the opposite direction. 

This is not the end of the story as later when I returned to the UK I discovered that when Andy went to check-in at Melbourne airport he discovered that his flight was actually leaving from Sydney !!!!!! He somehow managed to talk his way on to a flight out of Melbourne to Athens. I think the Sydney to Athens flight went via Melbourne, which would make sense as Melbourne has a large Greek community. I also seem to recall  that Andy was going to use his 9 hour stop-over to make a quick trip in to Athens but there was a National Strike that day and he couldn't get out the airport (Andy - correct me if I'm wrong). 

Accounting for the 9 hour stop over in Athens and the whole bus trip his journey home probably took him about 80 hours. Epic. They don't call him Andy Brown for nothing.

5th January 1992 Day 169

The Diary
Andy and I arrived early in Coffs Harbour, feeling not too bad after our overnighter, hiked to the hostel and dumped our gear. Went for food, walked to Muttonbird Island, crashed on the beach, went back to the hostel and then picked up Oz and Beth after their trip from Newcastle. Chinese meal and so to bed....

Nice dungarees Beth

Andy amusing himself in Coffs

2012
Pretty short entry - I'm sure we were knackered after the overnight journey really. We probably did absolutely nothing on this day other than hanging around waiting for Oz and Beth's bus to arrive. I'm sure I was moping - bored in Coffs when I could have been in Sydney with Christy. Andy was just hanging around killing time for a few days before heading back to Blighty. 


Sydney to Coffs - 660km