Newcastle or should I say Stokton

Day 1 – Anxiety!

After packing up we were back on the road for our final destination before hitting the bright lights of Sydney.  It was another couple of hundred Kilometres on the road before we hit the coastal town of Stockton which was just across the bay from Newcastle.

We found a really nice campsite which was right next to the beach, after being a bit fussy about our site (the first one was on a slope) we got a really great plot on a corner that led onto the beach.  Setting up, the neighbours introduced themselves to us and were very chatty.  One guy showed us his pictures of Stonehenge in Australia, some nutter had built a full scale model in his backyard that was in fact more complete that ours!!

During the day I was getting paranoid about the timescale to sell Muriel, worried that if we left it to Melbourne we would be running out of time to sell her and that we would have to take a much lower value for her.  After speaking to Shell about it she reluctantly agreed to advertise her in Sydney to try and test the water.

In the afternoon Shell drafted up an advert for Gumtree and tried to take the best pictures we could of her before posting her up online to see what interest we would have.  Shell’s not happy!!

Later on in the day we headed for the camp kitchen, which was an impressive stainless steel affair with plenty of good cooking facilities and quite busy.  As we were going to Sydney and would not be camping in Muriel for this time we had to use up all of our supplies and Shell cobbled together some interesting dish from the stuff we had, but when she chucked in a few chopped up chilies to pimp the dish up it chili-bombed the whole kitchen with people coughing and spluttering as the entered the kitchen.  However the result was pretty good.

After nuking the kitchen we then retired to Muriel for the night and had a few drinks and watched TV before turning in for the night.

Day 2 – An enquiry!!

Getting up around 8am and Shell checking her E-mail, she could not believe it when we had an enquiry about Muriel within 24 hour and the person was very eager to see her today.  After phoning the lady, Ali, who had made then enquiry we explained that we were not in Sydney yet but told her we would contact her when we arrived there and she could have first viewing.  She was extremely desperate to view her and said she was 90% going to buy her if Muriel was as advertised as she had just missed out on another van.

We were completely dumbstruck as we were not expecting such a quick and positive result within a day, although Shell did have a droopy bottom lip as she was not ready to give Muriel up just yet.

Once we had breakfast we then set about doing a few minor repairs to Muriel so she could look her best, Shell scrubbing her up a bit whilst I glued down a few raised floor tiles.

For the rest of the day we had a pretty lazy one, going down to the beach and reading during the afternoon.

Later on we headed to the kitchen to cook some food (No Chili’s this time!) before TV and bed.

Day 3 – Rugger Buggers!

Getting up this morning we were amazed to find we had another enquiry for Muriel, so we mailed back and let them know the situation and that we would contact them should Ali not want to buy her.

After a good breakfast and chatting with the neighbours for a bit we decided to go and have a look around town.  The town was pretty quaint and not too big so it wasn’t too long before we found ourselves inside a traditional looking Aussie pub.

We sat in the beer garden and had a couple of cold pints whilst we decided what to do and chatted to a couple of the locals.  It appeared that everyone there was looking forward to a game of rugby and when I enquired about it I was told it was the local team’s last game of the season and it was being played just up the road and was free, so we thought we would go and check it out

Grabbing a bite to eat at the pub as we had dwindling supplies and were feeling a bit lazy we then headed off to the rugby ground, which as luck would have it was right next to our campsite.

When we got there we were surprised to see that there were a few hundred spectators there and they were pretty vocal.  So we found a spot on the grass verge and spent the rest of the afternoon watching the game, unfortunately our chosen team (the home side of Stockton) took a bit of a pasting, but the game was pretty enjoyable lying there in the sun. Note the ref’s tshirts in the pic below.

The final whistle went and we were going to go back to the pub where the teams and supporters were heading for a knees up with a local band, but then we thought as this possibly could be our last night in Muriel that we would return to her to enjoy one final night.

So for the rest of the evening we sat drinking under the awning recounting all our adventures in Muriel before getting inside her cosy fairy-lit interiors and bedding down for the night.