Day 34 Thursday 17/7/2025 Darlington Beach, some cloud 8 – 20

Rain is forecast for the rest of the week, so we deem today ‘washing day’. Today’s campground entertainment is right next door as the extended family have started to pack up. There are grandparents, parents, and 3 kids, 7 in all. The grannies are sleeping in the camper trailer, parents in a roof top tent on the car and the kids in a tent on the ground. Grandpa is not a ‘packer upperer’ kind of guy, he’s wandering about picking things up and putting them somewhere else. It’s painful to watch.

Just north of Coffs Harbour there are several ocean-front resorts, so we take a drive just to see what they are like. One is particularly nice, but we won’t swap.

Returning to camp a few hours later, it seems that our neighbours aren’t leaving tomorrow, they were meant to leave at 10:00 this morning! The camper trailer is packed and down, so too the roof top tent. It seems that there’s a problem, there’s a mountain of junk still on the ground, tempers are frayed, and there’s a lot of colourful name calling before everyone shoots through and leaves mum sitting amongst the pile of camping gear with the littlies. Eventually the family return with an extra car, refuse to pack it and wander off to get dinner leaving mum to load the car. At 5:00pm they all leave, just a tad later than the 10:00am checkout…We wonder who had to pay the extra night fee?

Throw in a mob of mooching kangaroos and boy, you don’t get that sort of entertainment in a 5-star resort now do you?

We clear our heads with a walk on the beach and cook chicken risotto for dinner.

Accom: $47.00