After three days of rain the sun has finally found my temporary address: Port Macquarie in New South Wales. Hardly any wind, no need for a jacket and sunshine that has me wishing I’d put on suncream. When I’m travelling (not that I really am now) I find the biggest realisation of how far away from home I am comes when I do things I would normally do at home. Standing on the Great Wall in China was just as much an experience as going grocery shopping in Shanghai. One of my favourite memories of Vietnam is sitting in a cafe reading the Herald Sun (it was a few days old by the time I got it). It probably seems silly to travel so far to do something so seemingly boring, but I love treating a new city as my home for however long I’m there.
It’s that thinking that had me squeezing my running gear into my carry-on luggage and today I made use of it. Port Macquarie is a beautiful town, well at least half of it is. The half that hasn’t been taken over by developers out to make their millions. I loved this town when I was younger, but have seen it become more and more like the Gold Coast: high-rise buildings with the views going to the highest bidder. However, there is one thing that can’t change. Whether it was convenience or some smart forward planning, the road separates the beaches from the buildings. That means access to the beaches is all mine.
I ran through the streets on my way to Town Beach. Despite this being a relatively flat town and certainly a retirement haven, the footpaths are very intermittent in the residential area. At least the roads are wide enough for me to sneak in the gutter without trouble.
My plan once hitting the beach was to follow the road round along the Coast, however I couldn’t resist a visit to the breakwall. In summer this is one of my favourite places to come. It’s well lit and acts as a barrier between a caravan park and the Hastings river. I wasn’t the only one relishing the weather. I doubled back and then jumped on the track that weaves along the other beaches: Oxley, Flynn and Shelley’s.
Port is a beautiful town and every summer swells with tourists. As I ran along I began thinking how nice it would be to live here, but really there’s not much difference between here and home. Granted, the weather is a good deal better, but then I get sunburnt if I stand too close to a candle so that’s not a selling point. We have gorgeous beaches in Tasmania and we don’t have thousands of people rocking up every summer. After counting down the years until I could leave the Coast when I was a teenager, who’d have thought that with three weeks to go, I might actually miss it?
