Beachitude
(n.) when you start to feel grumpy and snarky because you miss the beach. Source: Pinterest.
After all the chopping and changing of dates and postponing plans we made it to Evans Head for our first real holiday in five years, and the first in our new-to-us caravan.
Our previous proper holiday was 5 months road-tripping around Australia towing our old pop-top caravan. We arrived back home on 10 October 2016.
This year’s original holiday plan was conceived during our seemingly futile search to buy caravan. We booked a week in a beach house at Hawks Nest to celebrate the G.O.’s retirement; then shifted the dates from June to July to November, a casualty of conflicting commitments.
The subsequent holiday at Evans Head came about after we bought our caravan in June from a member of a local caravan club of which the G.O.’s aunt is president. As a gesture of goodwill & gratitude for her help, we joined the club and agreed to attend the next rally at Evans Head in September… postponed due to a Covid lockdown 20 minutes after I made the booking, then moved by the club to mid-October.
We were all set to go, when a couple of days beforehand we received a call necessitating the G.O. attend a medical appointment with his mother during the week we’d booked for Evans Head. I cried for a couple of minutes then telephoned the caravan park and delayed our arrival until later in the week: in hindsight, fortuitous given the 134 mm rain they received on our initial arrival date.
Indeed our holiday passed a little too quickly for our liking so the day before our departure we made a correction… this time in our favour, and deferred it by 2 days.
“To some it’s just sand and water. To me, it’s where I regain my sanity.” Source: Facebook
daleleelife101.blog 
I do love Enid Blyton. And people who quote her.
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Aah thank you. Enid Blyton was a childhood favourite… and remains so.
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I’m so glad you finally got away and hope the new van turned out to be a beauty. We are also allowed to make plans now. Although we are technically free from midnight tonight to travel anywhere, I’ve become wary, hesitant or perhaps just slack. I need to get out there soon.
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The new van is everything we wanted… we’re hoping without getting ahead of ourselves to get good use out of it. We felt similarly, a conflicting desire for a change of scenery + different day-to-day and a reluctance to leave the covid-safe comfort zone we’ve created… but I happy-cried on our first walk along the breakwall… it was just so good to have those holiday feelz.
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Yes! This is what I’m waiting for at NH! It isn’t just the beach either, is it? It’s the whole ‘get away and relax and do different stuff, eat different food, meet friends and chill’ vibe. I feel deeply cheated of our recent small trip by how events unfolded: 5 days trapped in a small caravan with no car isn’t the way we’d envisaged our break. Still, we have March to look forward to, and and we have so much to catch up with you about after so long. Pencil it in now – 3-7 March in NH!
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Waiting 🥰
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Your March dates are safe in my diary! … no other social dates for 2022 just as yet as I couldn’t stand another bout of shifting plans… I felt for and thought of you often during our parallel breaks, and wished you’d been able to head south, where had you been enroute or in situ at NH your unfortunate event wouldn’t have played out quite so badly, as we’d have been somewhere in the vicinity to ride to your rescue.
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How I love Enid Blyton. I have the full famous five series and all the others as well …. My childhood favourite and my Go-To when I want my eyes to run over words & as many times as I read she never ever disappoints ❤️
So glad you got to go for your mini holiday & the pics are spectacular 🤩
We are officially out of lockdown as of 6pm last evening and going wedding cake tasting with my eldest now 😊
Less than 4 months to the event so it’s all systems GO 😍
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My family had Enid Blyton’s Famous Five series… they originally belonged to Dad and my uncles & aunt. Sadly they got lost somewhere along the way. I might just shout myself a set. Planning a wedding seems like a fine way to celebrate coming out of lockdown.
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I’ve never been a beach bunny, but your lovely photos made me suddenly crave the /scent/ of the sea. Literally cannot remember the last time I was anywhere near a beach. I’ve decided a visit to the beach will be on our bucket list of things to do [once I’m fully vaccinated]. In the meantime, I have holiday-envy. 😀
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The seaside scent at Evans Head hit me like a truck… it and the constant soundtrack of the waves was what I needed. One of our favourite coastal areas down your way is the Bellarine Peninsula particularly Barwon Heads > Ocean Grove where they filmed the TV series Seachange.
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Yes, it’s beautiful down that way, and I can totally relate to ‘the constant soundtrack of the waves’. I remember when the Offspring was young, we went down to the beach…somewhere past Brighton? and had a picnic at night, on the beach. -sigh- Now look what you’ve done. I’ve gone all nostalgic. 🙂
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Waves of nostalgia/longing washed over me as I read this post.To be away, wandering in a different spot (and now we can!); to be with friends and family who want to walk beaches and play games beside the caravan; and to be in the caravan and all that conjures up. We sold ours last year, so caravanning life is off the agenda now (although I won’t miss showering in a caravan park toilet block!). Maybe it was just relief that now we can do these things. i do hope there are many more caravanning adventures in your near future. And by the way, was your trip around Australia really as long ago as 2016?
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We’ve packed a lot into the 5 years since our big trip! Not sure when we’ll get to do it again but we haven’t taken it off the future agenda. In the meantime we’re looking forward to exploring the options within a few hundred kilometres of home, and expanding our scope when we can. It didn’t take us long to get back into caravan life groove… including the park’s amenities… well maintained and which we were happy to use despite having our own in the van, as it means less cleaning and more holiday for us.
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it sounds like “just what you needed” – I would imagine that many campgrounds have smartened up their services since, they had “no campers because of we know what” – I was hoping our roadmap out of the Auckland lockdown was to be over completely but now it’s the old weasel words of “in principle” but not this week! And not leaving the stupid roadmap rather enter “Step 2” … has a few more freedoms but not much!
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We’ve enjoyed the freedom but in our usual safety first fashion. We’re having another, different kind of holiday this week that has coincided with lessening of restrictions for the double vaxxed, and it’s a lot busier but still doable.
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