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Righto...*deep breath*
Drove up (5/6 hr drive) to port maquarie on saturday-as I predicted there was a lot of grumbling and shouting and complaining...
Arrived at about six after having CRAPPIEST meal of my ENTIRE LIFE at a petrol stop, dragged our 16 ton gzillion bags up the stairs, waited for about 10 minutes with my arms falling off while dad tried to type in the security code for our apartment in the pitch-black. Finally mum brought out her cig. lighter and then bragged that her smoking DID come in handy...
Brawl ensued about who was sleeping where...
I'll let you in on a secret-the long drive did prove useful, as I was just daydreaming and listening to evanescence, a stray thought opened the gateway to a brand new plotline, and my brain was flooded with inspiration! so all that time in the car I was busily stuffing ideas and events and characters from this new inspiration of mine into the various nooks and crannies of my mind...so once we had sorted out who was sleeping where, I put on my inspiration music and sat down at the desk so conveniently situated in our room and scrawled frantically on the first piece of paper I could find in my backpack-which happened to be one of the notes we passed in class!-until the batteries on my mp3 ran out crying crying
DAY 1- da da da dum!
Not much-slept half the day and spent the rest exploring the resort. They had some good rec. activities-putt putt golf, swimming, squash, tennis all these free games in the teen room, a giant checkers set and shuffleboard! Shuffleboard is an awesome game! It's like a mixture between hockey and bowling, if you can imagine that! there are two triangles on either end of a long thin rectangle court. two players gather at one end of the court, and are given four large hockey puck sorta things, and a pronged stick. Each player takes turns shoving their pucks with the sticks to the other side of the court, where it will hopefully stop in the other triangle. Where it lands affects the score-at the top of the triangle, it is 10 points, middle of the triangle was 8 points, end of the triangle was 7 points and behind that it was -10 points (ooh). My brother took great delight in knocking MY pieces into the -10 area. so yes, I enjoyed shuffleboard a lot.
When we returned to the unit, we watched superman 1 during which I had a great time in pointing out all the little plot flaws...then watched Chris Martin, lead singer of coldplay being interviewed on Andrew Denton's show, Enough Rope.
then we slept...
DAY 2-Monday
Slept half the day (again) and then we went out to port maquarie to shop for supplies and to have a look around the shops! Came home swam a lot in the FREEZING COLD pool that only I was brave enough to stay in, watched a movie, went to bed...

Day 3-Tuesday
Today went out and had a look at all the pretty beaches (sliced my hand open climbing some sharp rocks that didn't like me very much) and collected some pretty stones that I bled all over, much to my sister's disgust- had delicious ravioli and stir fry for dinner! Then got dressed hurriedly and we went to see superman returns, which is a good movie, but had one or two plot flaws that we were heatedly discussing in the car. My sister, being my sister, personally knew the script writer and the director, and superman himself, and knew the reasons for everything in the movie. When I pointed this out to her, she punched me in the head and bet my glasses. I still have a lovely looking bruise on my temple.

Day 4-Wednesday
Today Dad decided that we'd actually do something, and we drove about an hour to Timbertown!
timber town is awesome! So much to see! There's a fudge factory where you can buy a big bag of rocky road *drools* for $4, yummy blocks of fudge for anything between 1 and 3 dollars, and all other masterpieces of food and candy all at really low prices! Best of course, were the factory seconds, which were things the factory didn't want-like slabs of fudge that were slightly too big, or too small, funny chocolate experiments, all different kinds of candies that they had made too many of-all put into huge bags for $3.50!!!!! We got one of those each, and told not to complain.
But there were also all these olden time things, like cottages and carpenters and schools (that were tiny) and all these cute little shops, and a timber mill, a furniture store with all these lovely old dressers and cupboards in different rich shades of cedar and pine and redgum, and bloodwood-there was a bar/pub/dinner place which had really yummy cheap food and was playing music, there was a olden-style blacksmith who was making horse shoes and little delicate-looking sculptures of animals and ornate bells right in front our eyes (welding the metal and hammering it and everything!)
What was REALLY good though was the animals- there were miniature ponies, rabbits, bantam hens, roosters, a miniature belted talloway cow, whcih was soooooo cute, with his big brown eyes and came up and snuffled your hand, the horses...but what I found a little scary were the goats-from tiny little kids with thick white curly fur and little nobs for horns, to tan-pelted golden eyed adults with wickedly sharp horns that arced back toward their necks, to old ones with straggly beards and grey streaks down their coats-they all clustered around me and lipped my board shorts, butting their heads gently against my hands to be petted- completely ignoring everyone else, even the ones with food! Spose they recognised a fellow goat. xd
There was even a bullock team! 16 or so huge red bulls, with yokes over their necks, connected by a long thick chain. There was a show about it, and the guy told us all about the team, from their names to their eating habits. He also introduced us to the youngest bullock driver in Australia, who was 14 and named Daniel. They made the team pull a long tree (about 4 tonnes) around the oval, and they did it easily. I went and patted a bull afterwards, and Toby (little brother) had a go on the stockwhips (he looked like a creature from hell, cracking that whip and laughing evilly) I also sawed a bloodwood log with the young bullock driver -hard work, but I got a slice of wood, and had a chat with Daniel.
*looks back on timber town report* wow. I wrote a lot. I hope you didn't actually read all that. But there's more to come!
After Timbertown (which was entry by donation and was a non-profit organisation) we went to wauchope (pronounced war hope) and had pies for lunch, and, mum gave us a dollar and 25 c to spend on a pastry treat. Toby got a lamington, and kate and I got a triple chocolate crispy wafer brownie thing with sprinkles, except I got two cos the first one the lady said was too small to sell (personally, I didn't see any difference, but you didn't hear me complaining!).
Went home full of chocolate and satisfied.

Day 5- Thursday
Woke up, went for a swim, stuffed around, avoiding the unit in general cos dad was shouting at mum to hurry up so they could leave the resort and do SOMETHING while mum kept replying with "I'll get up in 10 minutes".
Then we all headed up to Ellenborough falls, for bush walking and sight seeing. It was about a 90 minute drive up and down mountains on a windy, dirt dusty road. Blech. Got there, wobbled around on jelly legs for a while, then went down the 90 metre trail to the waterfall. Looked at the purdy waterfall then some bright spark decided to have a look at the other trails which were like 700 metres to 3 kilometres. Not really fun when the sun is setting and you don't know what is creeping around in the damp undergrowth (a.k.a leeches. Have I told you about my previous experience with leeches that resulted in my scarring for life and a deepset pathological fear/hatred of leeches?) so yes.
Then everybody got cranky cos dad was feeling sick so decided not to drive back the windy way, instead taking the highway to TAREE!!!! Taree is about two hours from port maquarie, so we drove an hour down the straight road TO taree, then two hours back up another road to port maquarie. Dad was defending himself saying no one in the car knew anything about geography, and no one ever appreciated anything he did bla bla bla. I just lost myself in my story which was rapidly building in my mind.

Day 6-Friday. Can't really be counted as a day cos we left the resort today.
As previously mentioned, left resort today after playing all the games one last time, and drove back home, which was extremely annoying cos I couldn't listen to MY music cos my mp3 ran outta batteries. We did visit the tallest/biggest tree in NSW on the way down-that was pretty cool. The tree, called 'the Grandis' was a eucalyptus grandis and was 76.2 metres high. twas huge.

The End.

Ta da!

That's gotta be a record...