Life's a beach Part 2: A coastal adventure from Coffs Harbour to Foster

HAT HEAD NATIONAL PARK

After the sun had well and truly gone down at the end of the first day of this adventure we ended up at Hat Head National Park. You'll need to drive down a few k's of dirt road to get there, which in my opinion, makes it all the better. The campground was pretty quiet with more roo's than people loitering the grounds. After a great nights sleep in Rocky we decided to walk through the scrub and find ourselves a beach. A beach we had all to ourselves, such is the benefit of going to a slightly remote beach during cold, wet, windy weather.

HAT HEAD BEACH
After we had our fun on the remote beach we set back off down the dirt road to see the main beach in Hat Head. The people relaxing here seemed to be a much younger demographic than the places we had been the previous day. There's a quite little tidle inlet to the south, with a small breakwall leading it to the ocean. Waves were decent and seemed to come through in consistant predictable sets.


CRESCENT HEAD

 The first thing we did here was drive up the the headland where there is a great lookout. It gave us a spectacular view back north showing us the beach we had to ourselves earlier and a a lovely view over the national park to south. After that we head into the township and ate a mango, because that's what you do at Crescent Head. The main beach was filled with surfers and on the north side of the lagoon inlet was the most southern part of Hat Head National Park. The inlet was crystal clear, smooth and great for paddle boarders. The town was busy, but didn't feel too crowded.

RICARDOES TOMATOES
This is a pretty interesting little place where you can go and pick your own strawberries at $16 a kilo. We made sure we picked the best strawberries and they were awesome! They have a variety of tomato, strawberry and various other fruit and veg sauces and relishes.


PORT MACQUARIE
Here's a city with a beach, you can get all the things you need to stock up on from a city, whilst never being too far from a salty place for a swim. You'll find all walks of life living and holidaying here at Port Macquarie. Jeni had holidays with her family quite a bit when growing up and wanted to take me out to her favourite resturaunt from her younger days, The Pancake Place where we devoured some delicious Chocolate Indulgance pancakes!

BONNY HILLS

Another place close to Jen's heart. She adored the place when she was younger. We splashed out on a night at the local Big 4, always good to have a shower! Despite the weather still being too cold for swimming, Jeni reminisced on her younger days as we strolled along the beaches.

CAMDEN HEAD

East of Laurieton, this is the most southern beach on the coastal loop south of Port Macquarie. Quite a relaxed beach with a breakwall and inlet leading to a lagoon full of oyster farms. 

KATTANG NATURE RESERVE 
Found on the south side of Camden Head, to get there by land you need to travel right into Laurieton and go across and around the lagoon. Kattang Nature Reserve leads you up to Camden Head Lookout. Upon our arrival the weather was on the verge of rain, birds were singing away and the smells from within the nature reserve were delightful. We strolled through to the lookout for a great view, but didn't stay too long as we could see another storm rolling in which made it to Rocky a few seconds before us!

NORTH BROTHER MOUNTAIN

On our way to meet up with the Pacific Highway, we took a quick detour up North Brother Mountain. From up here we got spectacular views north all the way up to Port Macquarie and to south over Diamond Head and Crowdy Bay national parks. A top spot to stop for a lunch with a view!

OLD BAR

East of Taree you'll find Old Bar, a bit of a rustic beach town. The beach was quiet and nice. We were torn wether to go for a swim or not as we saw this thing we hadn't seen for a while called the sun, but the weather was still pretty chilly.

RED HEAD (BLACK HEAD BEACH)

Our favourite beach in Newcastle is Redhead, so seeing a Red Head suburb, we had to check it out!
We pulled up near a nature reserve and strolled on down to the beach, which was not Red Head Beach, but Black Head Beach! A very pretty little beach, I believe a bit further south access to the beach would have been easier from the township of Black Head, where Red Head is more of a residential area. It does have a caravan park though which I didn't go into, but I'm sure would be excellent for accessing the beach.

Now the sun had finally come out to play and start to warm things up, we finish our beach scouting adventure and get busy enjoying the sun! I hope this brief beach run down helps you find a nice new place to visit on your next holiday or weekend trip around the Mid North Coast of NSW.

Hope you all have your Christmas shopping complete! Only a few days left before the big red beardy fella rocks up!