Newcastle - Part 2

The forecast for our weekend was not promising. But one thing that we've learned about Australian weather forecasting is that it leans heavily towards the pessimistic. Many times we've been baking in the sun while the forecast is promising rain at that very moment. Saturday was no exception: it was an 80% chance of rain, and in fact raining when we woke up, but I was willing to take the gamble that it would be fine. And it was, except for a couple brief showers!

Our first destination was breakky on the one street in Newcastle described as "trendy." And it WAS trendy: there were a few cute cafes and boutiques along Darby St, even though it wasn't very long or happening. We ate at Depot on Darby, and I documented our food because I felt like we were true-Aussie style: I had a greens bowl and T had a "toastie," which is basically a grilled cheese sandwich. We also ordered coffees because that's how Aussie we are.

After our breakky, we walked for about 25 minutes to get to the coastline and find the Anzac Memorial Walk. I'd read about this coastline walk in my trip planning: the existing coastline walk has recently been redone as a veterans memorial and was supposed to be really lovely. It did not disappoint, both as a memorial and as a coastal walk!

Our walk took us by Bar Beach, where we got see some local color with a surf competition just wrapping up. It is definitely a surf town, so there were lots of surfers around, beachside cafes, and great spots for picnics.

We walked down to Mereweather Beach, which has famously redone its historical baths. "Baths" are basically seaside pools that either are filled naturally from the ocean waves or as in the case at Mereweather, have a pump house to cycle in fresh water.

Mereweather was unique in that it had the typical bath that has the ocean waves coming into it (so the lap swimmers get a really good workout), and it also had a protected one for kiddos. There were a couple kids in there practicing paddling on their surfboards, which was super cute.

One thing that I noticed as soon as we got here 3 years ago and truly love about Australia is the general "don't be an idiot" mantra that rules public areas. There aren't a lot of fences or barriers in general. Even in Sydney, you are free to walk off the edge of the pier and into the water if you are so inclined. At Merewather Beach it was the same: the sidewalk basically ended in massive waves crashing into rocks.

I spent a little bit of time looking at all the shells and sealife washed up on the beach.

But we could see a shower was blowing in our way, so we tried to beat it back to one of the little beachside cafes. We made it without getting too wet and decided that we'd try cocowhip while we waited out the shower. Cocowhip, we learned, is basically frozen yogurt made from coconut water and bio-fermented coconut powder. A friend from work had recommend we try it and she wasn't wrong! We got the "salted caramel" flavor and it was really tasty! We gave it two thumbs up!

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