We decided to do something different this new years, so we packed up the car, got a convoy of mates and headed up the coast to Myall Lakes to camp for the long weekend.

This is Chewbacco. He was named after Matt’s attempt of remembering the characters name. I got him for Christmas, and he comes places with me.

Once we got in a set up, Matt and I took the kayaks out on the lake to see if anything was about.

The crew soon followed us with their own boat…

There were no fish, so we decided to swap the kayaks for beers and cook some dinner by the fire. Proper camping relaxing.

The next day we drove over to the beach – they have 4WD beaches up north, so Matt was super dooper excited to get his truck on the dunes. After a little beach bash, we stopped at a perfect spot so the boys could do some spear fishing. I stayed on the beach to catch some sting rays and get a tan.

Success! They caught a few things… one of which was a poisonous toad fish which I had to phone dad to figure out what it was. We threw it back in.

Our mate got stuck in the sand on the way back. Matt had to be the hero and pull him out.

New years night we headed into the small town to have a bit of dinner and some drinks at a local bowling club. They also had a meat raffle!

There were sparklers and fireworks, so we were happy!

Our last full day was another beach day. The boys went spear fishing again, I went snorkeling and invented a new game with Matt’s cousin: ultimate board frisbee. It’s basically playing frisbee while sitting on boogie boards in the water.

It was such a beautiful last day. Couldn’t have asked for a better send off. A new year had begun though, and it was back to work tomorrow.