lake macquarie

Because of the floods up north, I cancelled my 3-day 2-night road trip to Byron Bay and went on separate day trips on each of the three days on the Queen's Birthday long weekend. First up on an early Saturday morning was a day of exploration around Lake Macquarie, approximately two hours drive north of Sydney. My first stop was to the huge visitor information centre at Swansea where I collected a whole heap of maps and guides and started charting out the route for the day which basically hugged the perimeter of Lake Macquarie and went like this:

Swansea - Belmont - Valentine - Warners Bay - Teralba - Toronto - Bonnells Bay - Sunshine - Bankstown for dinner - home

I wore my rainboots despite the sunny weather as I knew I was going to go play in the swamps and lakes. Here's some me-time with my rainboots on a pavement by the Lake in Swansea.





I got some takeaway lunch and found this nice spot beside the Swansea RSL Club for a little picnic while I admired the surrounding scenery of boats and reflections. The sky was oh-so-blue and the water oh-so-calm-and-clear, it was such a picturesque setting.





After a satisfying lunch of fish and chips, seafood salad and a beer, I went and poked around the area with my camera as I always do. It was boats and more boats.



That seagull was probably checking out my rainboots while I frolicked around. And I realise that I don't have many other shots amongst the 400+ photos taken on this day where my face is actually in the frame.



Found a nice park and some very majestic houses in Teralba. I particularly like this lonely swing in the quiet park - I only saw two or three other humans in the hour I was there.



The colours of dusk were breathtaking.





And these are the final shots taken at Bonnells Bay before darkness engulfed my surroundings and I had to head back.





A total of 443 photos were taken on this day trip. I haven't had the time to really sort through them and have only featured some of my favourite ones here in this entry. There are more photos uploaded here in my Flickr set which I will be adding more pics to as and when I'm done sifting through them all.