When we were searching for good weekend trips around Sydney, we found that Port Stephens has a long stretch of sand dunes near the beach and we loved the idea of witnessing that landscape. It is around 250kms north of Sydney and so we decided to stay there for one night and explore the place around.

Day 1: Stockton Sand Dunes

We started our journey from Sydney little late around 10am in the morning. It was a good drive and we always love driving north of Sydney as it goes in between Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.

It started as a pleasant and bright sunny day and with few drizzles later, a colorful rainbow was formed 🙂 It’s been just six months that we had been in Australia and I already stopped counting the number of rainbows I have seen, definitely more than six.

As we moved towards Port Stephens from New Castle, the road is filled with greenery on both the sides.

We reached Birubi beach, from where the sand dunes begin.

After that point, either we need to take permit if we have a 4WD car or take a 4WD vehicle and go into the dunes. There was camel option too.

We decided to take a sand boarding tour where a bus will take us to the center of sand dunes, and there we can do sand boarding. We jumped on the bus to experience the dunes and the journey, without any idea of what sand boarding is.

It was a bumpy ride to reach the center. We were given two sand boards and the team there explained us on how to use it and left us on our own. The slope was high and it looked scary initially. After the initial ride, it felt okay 🙂

We tried two to three times and later went further to explore the dunes.

I didn’t expect the sand dunes to be that perfect, they looked exactly like the ones from desert and it surprised me a bit on how they could have survived this way perfectly for so long when it actually rains and it is surrounded by sea and trees.

We did sand boarding for one last time and got into the bus.

We reached the parking and then we headed to Nelson Bay to book a whale watching tour for the next day!

The booking counter was closed and we felt a bit anxious if we would be able to go for whale watching the next day. We had noted a couple of options for sunset near Nelson’s bay.

– Tomaree Head Summit (45min steep walk up the hill)

– Nelson Head light, short and easy walk

– Gan Gan lookout – accessible by car

We chose Gan Gan lookout in the interest of time, as it was close to sunset time. It was a beautiful place with 180 degrees views of Nelson bay. We could see Tomaree Head from the lookout and wished we had gone there. Added this Summit hike for next trip 🙂

Winter is making our travel difficult with early sunset times (4:55pm). Having nothing much to do outside, we reached our stay Ingenia Holidays, near One Mile Beach. We couldn’t get a glance of the beach, but could just hear the water sound.

The night sky looked clear and amazing with the milky way galaxy visible clearly at 6:30pm. We prepared our dinner and headed out to take a photo of the sky around 9pm, like we tried in New Zealand using a mobile stand. That was when we faced a weird incident. My husband felt something near his feet and pushed his leg forward to get rid of it and we found a small cat there in front of us. We tried to send it away from us, but to our surprise, it started coming towards us. Unable to understand what is happening there, we quickly reached our room, locked the door and started analyzing what happened. Luckily, it didn’t bite his leg, so we were a bit relaxed.

Cats and dogs in Australia are usually pets and they are not found on streets without owner. It somehow didn’t feel like a cat as it generally runs away when we try to go near it. It felt like a wild animal, but as far we know, there are no carnivores in Australia, almost all the animals are herbivores which don’t eat humans. My husband was sure that it wasn’t a cat as it had no tail. I searched on google for the list of wildlife in that area, which was when we recognized that the animal is called Wombat and it bites/attacks humans when it feels threatened. That was what it intended to do with us and we felt lucky to have escaped from there quickly. It felt scary for sometime, followed a moment a realization on how disconnected we as humans from the other species of the planet. Just wondered how ancient humans survived in a forest full of wildlife!

A day filled with surprises!

Day 2: Nelson Bay

I woke up early in the morning and wanted to check out the One Mile Beach located beside our hotel. Though I was little nervous after yesterday’s incident, sun light gave me some courage to head out alone to the beach. The beach was amazing and looked mystic with clouds.

I spent sometime near the beach and then we headed quickly by 9am to book a tour near the ferry point in Nelson Bay. We couldn’t figure out the best cruise there. We could see many boards of Imagine cruise on our way and thought that was the best one. But we couldn’t get booking for that, instead we got a seat in 11am Spirit cruise operated by Moon Shadow, which also looked good.

As soon as we started our trip, few people on our boat spotted a Dolphin, which we missed out. We felt little anxious thinking if we could spot atleast one Whale on the entire trip.

We couldn’t get the best spot, but got a decent spot on the deck with 180 degrees view of the Ocean. We enjoyed the pleasant sunny ride into the Ocean.

As our boat moved from bay to the ocean, we started feeling the strong ocean currents. As a precaution, we took a sea sickness pill at the start of the trip. I prepared myself to not bother much about whales, but to just enjoy the ride and beautiful views along the way. It was an amazing feeling being in the middle of the blue ocean.

All of a sudden, people started shouting pointing at the ocean, where I could see nothing as in the earlier dolphin case, and I felt disappointed to miss this one too. As we moved further, we could see a creature moving in the ocean creating bubbles. That was when we understood that whales come to the surface to breathe in three and half minute interval. The bubbles we could see was due to whale breathing. We now understood the pattern of whales and were ready to spot them.

These whales were migrating from Antarctica to Cairns(tropics) in this season(Winter), where they have their offspring. They start swimming back to Antarctica at the beginning of summer, taking their kids along with them. So, Australia luckily happened to be in the middle with an opportunity to view the whales in both their migrating seasons.

Finally, we could spot a couple of whales coming out to breathe and then go back into the Ocean. I almost jumped with excitement at that sight.

We could slowly spot many whales coming out in the pattern every 3mins. I couldn’t stop clicking their photos. We never got bored even after watching many whales, in fact we were all in greater enthusiasm to spot on our own before our Captain told us.

As we were busy looking in one direction, all of a sudden, a whale jumped completely out of the water in the air just beside our boat and we were all amazed looking at it. It was black on one side and white on the other side and appeared huge than what we expected. By the time, we were back to our senses and tried to click photo, it went inside the water. But those few moments were completely magical 🙂

Though we knew that the whale jumping out was a very occasional event, we couldn’t stop hoping for an another jump. The whales remained quiet after that and were just swimming peacefully.

The tail was the most attractive and easily captured part of its body. I didn’t expect to watch those many whales and at such a closer proximity. So, I was on cloud nine looking at them. Our captain was also happy that he could entertain and show us many whales and we started our journey back to Nelson bay. We found a rock structure similar to the famous Uluru rock in the ocean 🙂

We could spot some seals sleeping on the rocks on our way.

I hoped to watch Dolphins on our return journey. I kept looking out to find them, but no luck. There are plenty of dolphins in the bay and they can be seen in any season. But our captain also announced that we had little luck today in spotting dolphins as they were very quiet. With their smaller size, I don’t think we can spot them on the surface until they jump out.

On our next trip, we decided to take Dolphin watching tour to spot them. We were more than happy with whale watching and would love to come back for Dolphin spotting.

We started our journey back to Sydney with a lunch stop at New Castle. New Castle felt like a very big town with great infrastructure and wide roads.

We continued our journey from New Castle back to Sydney and reached the city just after sunset.

An amazing weekend trip, which went beyond our expectations came to an end!