If you grew up on the East Coast of Australia, chances are, you’ve done the Sydney to Brisbane drive more than a few times in your life. Whether it was for school holidays or to visit family and friends, most of us have made this road trip more than once.
A few weeks ago it was time to make this trip again, this time with a visitor from Europe, and with our caravan in tow. We gave ourselves 2 nights to get from Brisbane to Sydney, and I wanted to show our visitor more than the usual stops of Coffs Harbour (including the Big Banana of course ☺) and Port Macquarie – something a little less touristic.
But, Coffs Harbour is a nice half way point for the drive, so with a little searching on Google Maps, we decided to stop a little north of Coffs Harbour at a place called Red Rock.
What a beautiful surprise!
We found a caravan park called North Coast Holiday Parks Red Rock. The caravan park was simple but perfect, with great amenities – clean and enough options scattered perfectly throughout the caravan park so no one needed to venture too far from their campsite, and there is free wi-fi for those who needed to ‘plug in’ to the outside world.
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I liked that the caravan park is situated perfectly with the Corindi River on one side of the park, for the fishing enthusiasts, and the beach on the other, with beach access points within the actual park itself.
And we had some beautiful surprise guests at our site: some chickens and turkeys – and at night, kangaroos and even an echidna…much to the delight of our European guest!
The next day we were on the road again, and originally we had planned to stay at One Mile Beach. There is a caravan park we know there, Ingenia Holidays One Mile Beach, which is also right on the beach and has resident koalas lounging in the trees – a perfect combination to show someone from overseas – but it wasn’t meant to be. We were about one hour into our drive and signs started flashing on the highway that there was an accident ahead with “significant delays”. I don’t know about you, but “significant delays” is not something I want to see on a road trip…especially with the sun shining and a bright blue sky outside…what a shame to spend the day in a traffic jam!
So, a quick search on Google Maps to see which exits were between us and the accident, and without many options, the choice was easy – we would stop at South West Rocks for the night (and we found out later, it was a good choice as it was a four truck accident and even when the road re-opened, it was one lane for a while so the traffic jam was already reaching around 15km long by midday).
The choice was made and what a great afternoon and evening we had! We found a caravan park called Horseshoe Bay Holiday Park – and they had one powered site left with beach views for us – it was meant to be!
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We were really happy with the caravan park, not only for the beautiful views, but the amenities were great, there was free wi-fi, and enough restaurants and shops in walking distance so everything we needed was at hand.
South West Rocks is a beautiful spot – a small beach town, which I imagine becomes quite alive during the summer holidays, but for us who wanted something quiet, it was perfect at this time of year. There was plenty to see, with sweet little beaches to enjoy, the Arakoon National Park to wander through, and for history enthusiasts, there is the Trial Bay Goal to visit. And to put the cherry on top for our European friend, we went to Little Bay Picnic Area, where there are kangaroos grazing and not scared of human activity at all – actually, they were quite curious and would come right up to us!
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So after our unexpected and relaxed stop at South West Rocks, we made our way to Sydney, where we stayed with friends for a few days before getting on the road again, to the southernmost stop on our trip, Canberra.
Watch out for our next blog post, when we went to Canberra and then took the inland road back to Brisbane to complete our adventure!
