Fern Bay NSW

Our visit to Fern Bay Newcastle was a mix of tears, laughter and memories. With our van parked out the front of our friend Nerida’s house we spent two days just reminiscing and talking about our mate (Bro) Kimbo, Nerida’s husband who passed away nearly three years ago.

He was a life long firefighter with the NSW Fire Brigade and died due to him contracting cancer from the fire fighting foam. The chemicals – called perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – were used in firefighting foams in the 1970s. With Covid years restricting travel this was our 1st opportunity and we are so glad we did. After saying our goodbyes with promises we shall all get together again we left Fern Bay and headed to the town of Broke. Here we stayed in a lovely bush setting, a camp fire and jaffle’s for dinner and an early night as the temperature dropped. Next day we had a decision to make as to whether we choose Putty Road or Bylong Valley Way .. we chose Putty Road. Both are very twisty and steep up and down. Being the driver I didn’t get much of a chance to site see but what I did get to glance at was beautiful views, unfortunately there are no places to pull over safely to take photos.

Some of the homes and properties we drove past were surely owned by the mega rich, huge homes with large immaculate gardens and views that went forever. We stopped at a bakery called the Grumpy Baker, an interesting shop mixed with a rural farm supplies. The Pies and large veggie rolls ranked up there with the best we’ve had. With the roads being steep and windy it takes longer to get places, we stopped at an interesting looking place called Grey Gum Cafe, this place hosts many functions, mainly of the motorcycle type, it was in a state of repair and not open when we stopped but could see it would be a ‘happening’ place when open. We took some photos and moved on, that afternoon we chose to stop the night at Lake Wallace around 80k north of Bathurst. It rained most of the night and all next day, we are staying at the Showgrounds at Bathurst for a night to recharge the batteries, refill with water and diesel and do some grocery shopping and move on to Lake Carcoar tomorrow.