No uni, no child, no duty or oncall ….. bloody hell, wasn’t quite sure what to with ourselves!!! So we decided to go wandering 🙂
First stop was a coffee at Lake Cathie, although I came to regret that decision not long afterwards. Second stop, Kattang Nature Reserve at the head of the Camden Haven River.
A nice quiet meander around the breakwall and to the various lookouts, not realising until we go home and checked, that we had actually walked around 7.5km’s. Now I know why the coffee was sitting heavy in my gut 🙂
Deciding that further exploring would be done using a vehicle rather than my legs, we headed west to Swans Crossing Campground. It wasn’t without its frustrations, finding that the normal access was closed due to a bridge out. And then finding that the signposted diversion led to a road closed due to logging.
Anyway we took a diversion via Cold Nob Rd, Blackbutt Rd and Kerewong Rd which worked – actually the roads were in fairly good condition. Not good enough for a sedan, but the RAV4 didn’t have any issues.
I was going to head out via Bottlebrush Rd but came across another bridge that was out – having a world of luck with the tracks 🙂
Instead I decided to head south with the intention of landing on Lorne Rd via Tipperary Rd. Well we made it to Lorne Rd, but I didn’t come within a few km’s of Tipperary Rd – my perfect navigation had us further west on McLeods Creek Rd. Again – it worked!!!
We decided to turn onto Koppin Yarratt Rd through to Bulli Rd and then onto Comboyne. Unfortunately there is a landslip which has resulted in Koppin Yarratt Rd being closed further down the mountain, otherwise it’d be a good run down into Lansdowne.
A quick feed at Comboyne and we headed back into Kerewong State Forest, but this time via Playfords Rd and Blackbutt Rd. The road to Comboyne Tower was closed, so we walked it. 150m climb in 750m = sore legs 🙂
We continued following Blackbutt Rd through to Bulls Ground, turning onto Milligans Rd which comes out at the Bago Vineyards. The last bit back to Port Macquarie was completed easily enough, dodging the usual incompetence at the roundabouts 🙂
All up, a nice day out with now sore legs. Ended up doing 9km’s of walking and nearly 180km’s of driving. RAV4 has been perfect for this type of exploring, although we were talking about maybe running LT tyres on our next rotation, especially with the rock-base on a lot of tracks.