Friday - Day Three - Cessnock and Newcastle Airport

It's good that some things stay the same when we're on the road. I started the morning by doing a transcription job - and was happy with the set-up using the tablet as a second screen on the kitchen table. 

We decided not to go shopping to stock up for groceries in the house so we ordered online and did a direct to boot delivery at Woolies. It was good - once we worked out how to get to the parking bays for direct to boot - yes, I could have looked at the map they provided - but where's the fun in that? We didn't use a map either to go into the main street and find somewhere for breakfast - which turned out to be Ink - where the coffee was nice. It had hints of, I think it was nut flavour, and I remember wondering if this is what wine-tasting is like, where different flavour notes resonated in different parts of my palate. Ink had Christmas decorations in store, together with some Garfield cartoon (about coffee) on the walls, and on a shelf there was a water bottle with the label 'Nora's water bottle ❤️'. Nora used to work there for 'ever' and had retired and left the bottle - she's since gone to God, but they've left the bottle. Also at Ink - our first real Christmas carols for the season - aptly starting with Mariah Carey's 'All I Want For Christmas Is You'. 

The Christmas trappings are definitely in store now - to buy and to decorate. We passed an illuminated snowman in one store - which reminded us that we have one just like it, although a little smaller. Hmmmm, it must be in the garage with the other decorations. We'll need to look for it when we get home - bit it's nice to enjoy others while we're on the road.
Back at the house, I fiddled with the dash cam to see if I could get it working properly. I would have done a rest if I had a paperclip or sim pin but nada. I did reset the hand gesture sensitivity and that seems to have helped (there are lots of photos of the fence) so we'll see if it works on the road for real.



Wayne arrived early this afternoon and we went in search of lunch at what is billed as 'the best takeaway in Cessnock' - and it wasn't bad - when we finally found it. I'm not sure what it is about Cessnock and GPS devices, but this time it had us going through a derelict facility and where we should have been able to join back onto the road, there was now a fence. Hmmm. Hope that doesn't happen on our way to Dubbo in a couple of days ... I hate having to retrace our steps.
The GPS did get us to Newcastle Airport though, so we could up two more for the house - our mother and sister. There was a bit of a traffic along the way and the trip took about half an hour longer than it normally does. (Wayne has done the trip a few times.)

As is often the way, the drive back seemed faster but it actually was even with the short side trip to show the others the giant kookaburra at Kurri Kurri. 

Cessnock main drag

We made it back to Cessnock in time for the pre-wedding get-together with Greg (other brother) and his family and friends. It was the first time we four siblings and Mum have been together since our wedding. It would have been a great night even if I hadn't taken us in search of Christmas lights on the way home.