“In life everything happens for a reason. People meet not by chance but by fate. In meeting however… who cares about reason? I'm just glad we did.”

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We met Trish from Dunoon in Hampi, India last year. We had breakfast together in Bangalore and bumped into her again in Mysore. She gave us her contact details and told us to let her know if we were ever up her way as she had a spare room. Little did she know we would take her up on it! When we were going to be in Lismore we emailed Trish to see if she wanted to meet for coffee but later, when we lost our house sitting, we had to ask if we could park our van in her driveway so Nick could attend his course in Byron Bay. As we were trying to sneak out on Saturday morning to drive to Byron Maggie decided to make the most god awful noise. We are sure we woke the entire neighbourhood. Nick worked out that the fan was hitting something and that she was undrivable. We quickly joined the RACV only to find out we had a broken harmonic balancer and needed to be towed to Lismore.

The dogs certainly enjoyed the company and Nick quickly had a new best friend in Roy!

Today we are off to Banora Point, Tweed Heads to do a work exchange with Little Trace, owner of Goose Bumps clothing, and an old friend and collegue from my London days.

Thank goodness for our friends, new and old helping us 'get by' on the northern coast of NSW. This post is for you guys! Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Day One

We enjoyed this road sign on the Brunce Highway.

On advice from Frank, my dad's mate we took the inland road from Rockhampton and stayed the night in Mount Morgan, a mining town with a great pub. We enjoyed a barra burger and camped the night at a cheap and cheerful caravan park. We did go and check out the free but illegal camping site at the dam after a local said, “Pardon my French but the dam is a f…ing amazing place to camp – picture perfect – if you don't want to pay for a caravan park.”

That night we were treat to some amazing hospitality on the Gold Coast from James and his parents. The hospitality was so good we wanted to move in!

Day three

We decided to check out some of the beaches on the way to meeting the people we were house sitting for in Lismore. Brunswick Heads was our favourite along that stretch of coast.

We had afternoon tea with Don and Annette and met Sam the cat, our responsibility for the next six weeks. Deciding to stay at the cheapest cheapest caravan park we could find in Lismore we quickly learned cheap is not always best. We did not realise it was a residential park until we were inside of it and by then it was too late. Hey it was dark!

I was woken at about 11 pm with a women shouting, “Get the police! Someone get the police!”

The next minute a white van backed around the corner at speed and hit a palm tree before screeching off out of the park. Twenty minutes later the police arrived but we never found out what was going on. Needless to say I did not get much sleep that night!

You can see the palm tree he hit in the back ground! Thankfully he missed us!

Day Four

Setting off back to the coast we had our first coffee in Byron.

We explored more of the North coast and settled on Evans Head for the night. After our experience the night before we wanted a tourist park, and booked into 'The Golden Sands', a great caravan park by the river and only a short walk to the beach.

We were looking forward to starting our house sitting and having some creature comforts after our four day road trip!

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