Shake your Bouddi

A couple of weekends ago Jen and I headed on a girly camping/hiking weekend to the Bouddi Bouddi National Park on the central coast. We drove up Friday night and after discovering (luckily before we had left Sydney) that we had both forgotten to pack mugs (and that I had forgotten to pack rice for our Saturday night dinner!) necessitating a supermarket stop, we arrived at the Putty Beach campsite. We pitched the tent in the dark, with the aid of the car headlights - a definite bonus of car camping! - had some dessert then headed to bed to prepare for our day walk the next day.

Saturday was a beautiful day, after a week of pretty crappy weather, we woke to a clear blue sky, cool temperature (perfect for walking) and very little wind - perfect! After protecting our breakfast from some rather bold brush turkeys, we headed up to the Bouddi ridge to begin our Bouddi Coastal walk circuit. The directions we had downloaded from the web were a little confusing in places - incredible amounts of detail when not required then nothing at points where you'd think you'd need some decent information! Despite this we completed the first (inland) half of the walk with only a couple of (unplanned) side trips! We arrived at Little Beach for lunch - a really beautiful spot, which was pretty popular with locals and other visitors. After lunch we headed along the Bouddi Coastal walk proper. As the walking was pretty easy we decided to take in all the possible side trips leading us to the highlight of the walk. Just off one of the headlands we saw a whale and calf heading north close to the shore, showing off their tails and breaching occasionally - it was awesome! We watched them as they played their way out further from the shore then headed on to the next headland where we saw another 4 whales, but much further out and not quite so playful! The views along the coast were great, with a variety of vegetation, scenerary and topography. We went down to a couple of beaches, including Maitland Beach where the paddle-steamer "Maitland" was shipwrecked in the late 1800s, some of the wreck is still visible on the rock shelf. After an enjoyable's day walking we cracked a bottle of red, turned to and cooked lamb rogan josh followed by some steamed puddings for desert - yum!

Brush turkey on the morning hunt for food!

Lunch at Little Beach

Whales! (Seriously they are there - it was just really hard to capture them!)

Maitland Beach

Awesome rock on Maitland Beach

Sunday we had a well deserved sleep in, then a fabulous cook-up of french toast, bacon and maple syrup - luxury camping! We did a short walk down to Box Head which has great views over to Barrenjoey, then back to Sydney for my hockey game.


The weekend was capped off by a trip to the Australia v China soccer match at Olympic Stadium with Paul, Leonie and James, and my work friends Amanda, Mitch and Dave - it was a packed house but unforuntalty a disappointing game - Australia having already qualified for the next round and playing an understrength side. It was still a fun night and all in all a fabulous weekend!