old bar, nsw

Here's a bit of Old Bar (population about 3, 500), where my 'basecamp' is... ;) where I'm staying in between my travels around Australia, and it's where Shane grew up and lives at the moment.

Like I said before: Old Bar is a small beach town just a 3.5 - 4 hour drive north of Sydney.

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It's a great beach town with a few different beaches to go to and with a few other neighbouring beach towns just a 20 min drive away. Old Bar has a nice charm to the place, and so far it's been wonderful just relaxing and enjoying the quietness of it all mixed in with some other fun activities. Really nice people and a place where I get to experience the 'real' Aussie way of life, haha, versus some of the more touristy areas.

So I took some photos around town to give you and idea of where I am staying at the moment! The main street of Old Bar, Old Bar beach, the Tavern, Old Bar Bowling Club...

Taree is the closest city to Old Bar (about 10-15 min drive)

The main strip, on Old Bar Road, where all the shops and cafes are

Went to Martine's, on the strip, for lunch one day and had a very yummy pizza - Martine's special. I discovered how good avocados are on pizza.

Another day, I went to have some gelato at The Little Favorite. Another breakfast/lunch cafe type place. I got a taro gelato and mmmMmm!

This is the Old Bar Bakery, where we get our yummy meat pies and pastries

Old Bar Beach

At Old Bar Beach - First Corner at 8am on a Saturday! Watching people surf and getting some sun!

Had the beach to myself,  aside from people walking by

At the Old Bar Tavern with friends 

The Old Bar Bowling Club - went there to celebrate Pirates' (rugby team) win

forster, nsw

Went to another nearby beach town, Forster, which is about 25 min away from Old Bar. Beautiful place when it's a sunny day. The water is so blue and the sand nice and white!

Swam to the little island from the dock to the little island close by. I was a little scared to jump into the water... haha.. so I was standing at the dock preparing myself to jump in. Shane had already jumped in and was helping to encourage me, I felt like such a scaredy cat, it wasn't very deep or a big jump either. I think I was just freaking myself out by thinking about it too much so he came back out to help me... and all I hear is "SORRY!" and *SPLASH* He pushed me in!! Haha, I had a laugh about it and didn't mind. He's logic, "She'll thank me for this after" which I did LOL.

there's the little island we swam to

view from the bridge: the island we swam to. you can see a few boats there

It was a quick, nice swim. Explored around under the bridge where it was really shallow and could walk around under there. In the summer, you would see lots of small boats parked at the island and people just hanging out there. It's pretty tiny, so I'm not sure how many people can get on there!

After the swim, we had some lunch at a cafe on the other side of the beach. Did a bit of walking around the local shops. What a great day!

another side of the beach and water

another view from over the bridge

harrington & crowdy head, nsw

Harrington / Crowdy head is about 20 minutes away from Old Bar. Shane and I went out there one Friday evening for dinner and also to show me around a bit!

Shane and I

We went to Crowdy Head Fish Co-op to get half a kilo of school prawns for $7 and went to the lighthouse to snack on them before dinner. There was a nice sunset and a beautiful view there.

Then we went to have dinner at Ems Thai. It's pretty cool that a lot of places in Australia are BYO so you can bring your own drinks. We got a bottle of white wine to go with our dinner. The food was delicious!

Crowdy Head lighthouse

Scenery around the lighthouse

Thai Restaurant in Harrington