Port is a Drink. Macquarie is a Dictionary.

Leaving Sydney was really difficult for two reasons. One, the Crazy Canadian and I had a great time there and we were fortunate to stay with such a great hostess. Two, the traffic was fucking balls and the amount of one-way streets that lead you either – A) Into the city, B) Blink and you’ll miss it to the outer suburbs or C) Out of the city – are far too numerous and far too confusing.

Several backtracking attempts and heavy traffic woes later, we were out of the city and back on the road.

From memory these roads weren’t anywhere near as pretty as I’d grown accustomed to during the trip. No, these were essentially  roadwork-laden, concrete slab slappin’ tracks of 70km/h or less death zones.

While travelling along this road, at some point my GPS dropped out of coverage and I thought, “Ah, well. No big deal. Surely there will be road signs that guide me toward Port Macquarie.”

The problem with assuming that logical placement of road signs indicating exactly where it is you want to go or wish to head toward is you end up looking like as big an idiot as the planners that didn’t place road signs anywhere to indicate to drivers exactly where it is they would be heading should they follow road ‘A’ or ‘B’. You’d think with a 50/50 shot, I”d have less of a chance of going the wrong way, right?

Wuh.

Ruh.

Ong.

The Crazy Canadian was asleep at the time, but I ended up taking an accidental visit to Newcastle. That’s the second visit I’ve ever made to Newcastle, but I’ll talk some more about that in a moment.

The fact that a satellite cannot penetrate Newcastle makes me draw toward one rational conclusion – Newcastle has its very own electromagnetic field that invokes some form of Pavlovian response whenever locals try and leave the city.

Imagine that you’ve lived in Newcastle all your life. Then you decide it’s time to hit the big cities. At first, it is a very minor headache.
It slowly, but surely, turns into a migraine. If left unchecked, you won’t wake up one morning.

Novocastrians! I have discovered your plight. Take heed of my words – find the headquarters of the electromagnetic field and destroy it. Burn it to the ground. Throw rocks at it until someone comes out to tell you off. Whatever it takes.

Back to the first time I visited Newcastle. The year was 2006. I was studying a graduate diploma of creative writing, the editor of Rabelais magazine and stuffing my face with whatever voluntary positions I could with A New Leaf Media. One such position was being involved with the National Student Media Conference at the This Is Not Art  (TINA) festival held in Newcastle.

I look back on the time I spent there now and I think…

“Was I really such an epic prat six years ago?”

In case you couldn’t tell from what’s already been written in this post, I didn’t really like Newcastle. Someday I’ll head back there and give it another chance, because driving through there was quite nice this time around.

I’ve already dedicated too many words to Newcastle in this post, though.

Arriving at Port Macquarie near sunset, after checking in at our hostel, we took a walk along the riverside and harbour. The town itself is quite small, but very scenic. At one point, the coastline is lined with rocks that have been painted by locals with all sorts of designs splattered all over them. One of them even had a large painting of Harley Quinn (the ‘Batman: The Animated Series’ design for you nerds out there).

The next morning and our last day in Port Macquarie started off well enough. The Crazy Canadian managed to live up to the moniker I’ve given her over breakfast. Obviously, I had to get her to sample Vegemite while she was here. It’s a rite of passage for every tourist that arrives in our country.

Her response…?

“That tastes like arse.”

But rather than admit defeat, she decided to give it another try. Only to try it again on toast, not enjoy it and decide to put jam on the  opposite side of the slice in an effort to enjoy it. It fell to me to finish off this monstrosity, as the Crazy Canadian couldn’t deal with the taste sensation she had created. It fell below takoyaki flavoured lemonade in terms of disgusting, but the mix of Vegemite, raspberry jam and warm toast was just… Different. 

After breakfast, we headed down to the marina to partake in some jetboating. For 45 minutes, we were on the ocean, surfing waves, doing 360-degree spins and hard throttle braking into waves. As a result of these manoeuvres, we got drenched from head-to-toe even with a full-body poncho on.

At different points the driver was stopping on the ocean to tell us about the history of the town, but sitting right at the back of the boat and with no form of megaphone or PA system, it just looked like he was pointing at various things along the coastline and the ocean and yelling at them, then looking at us for confirmation that his rants at nature were somehow justified.

And then came another amazing nature experience. We were lucky enough to have not one, but two pods of dolphins swimming alongside our jetboat. The first pod was less than 10 metres away from us, and there was anywhere between 5-10 dolphins in the first pod. The second pod was further away, but there was between 10-15 dolphins in that pod.

If you’ve never witnessed a dolphin swim, especially a wild one, put it on your bucket list.

After drying off a bit, it turned out our nature experiences weren’t done for the day. Before leaving Port Macquarie, we drove around some more of the town. After turning a few corners, all of a sudden it seemed like we were back in rainforest. But it did mean that we could visit the…

Port Macquarie Koala Hospital!

This not-for-profit organisation houses, helps and rehabilitates injured and sick koalas back to health before they can be let out into the wild. Did you know koalas have their very own form of chlamydia? True story. Although, it’s called ‘wet bottom’, which is somehow more gross than chlamydia.

Anyhow, if you visit the website link above (or the actual place) donate some moolah – or even adopt a koala! Everyone that works there (except the one vet) is a volunteer. They had somewhere between 15-20 koalas that they were nursing and some of the surgery work they’ve done is truly amazing stuff. Expect your face to melt off with the amount of cute you’ll be surrounded by.

Next time: Byron Bay!