Woongarrah

My next stop on my journey was friends of Dean and Jenny‘s Paul and Maree. Dean And Jenny were kind enough to reach out to their friends and and ask if I could stay with them for the night. I’m so fortunate that they said yes and I got to meet them and spend some time in a home and chatting with some local getting great ideas and hearing lots of stories.

They live in Woongarrah, a town between the two biggest cities in New South Wales Newcastle in Sydney. They live in a town along the beach, which I stopped at along my way, and was absolutely beautiful.

The drive from Armidale,  was through a number of country towns. Once I got to Paul‘s house, he was able to tell me a lot of the history of the land. His parents lived up in Armidale when they were younger going to school. Along the drive were a lot of really interesting small towns. Scone was one a town known for reading of thoroughbred horses. Paul said that this is the biggest area in Australia for breeding through friends which I thought was really interesting. All the little town had this very unique Australian architecture, it kind of reminds me of Florida in a way, but also like an old western and also like England. I know that doesn’t give you a very good idea of what these towns might look like, but imagine a number of small shops along a main promenade, and all of them have awnings going out onto the street, which are wooden and quite intricate. On top of the awnings are a balcony that the second floor would be able to walk out on which also has intricate would work. I’ll try to remember to take photos the next time I’ve passed through one of these towns, but sometimes I forget because I’m too busy, admiring, thinking, and enjoying.

Anyway, it was a lovely drive and then I ended on the coast at redhead Beach where I went and walked in the water a little bit. I did get saved, though by a local who waved her arms at me and indicated that I should be careful as I walked over towards her in order to discover that there were a bunch of “blue bottles“. Then, adding to my confusion, I thought she meant broken glass,she did not mean glass she meant stingers a.k.a. jellyfish and blue bottle are a very bright blue and clear stinger, which not deadly, but can be really quite painful apparently. Note that the only reason why I was in the water in the first place was there were a lot of other people in the water, and, what Paul told me is that they can’t kill you, but they can be very uncomfortable, so I don’t really know what to think about that, but I was lucky and didn’t get stung and was well warned despite a little miscommunication. Whatever I realize is here what they call stingers aren’t always jellyfish although I think in the United States, we would call them all jellyfish, but blue bottles which are related to Portuguese Man of war jellyfish are not actually true jellyfish they’re different family I believe of cnidarian than true jellyfish which I believe is differentiated because each individual is actually 4 individuals fused together? (Yeah, just googled it, that’s a simplified way of differentiating them). 

Anyway, I had a great evening and morning chatting with them.