It was time to continue our journey south, this time in a hire car (from Juicy Lucy) rather than a camper van. Both had their pros and cons. Realising we really couldn’t transport much food (we learnt that the hard way with some melted butter) you end up eating out more in a car but it’s a lot easier to find a parking space.

We only gave Gold Coast a day, meeting up with another one of Molly’s friends from Horizon English School who had moved back home.

The girls loved seeing Jennayah and her younger sister Nikisha again, we found a play area and picnic spot despite a busy Saturday at Burleigh Heads with national surf ski competitions to watch.

That night we stayed at Palm Beach, a great expanse of sand. We enjoyed listening to Brett Gannon on the guitar all evening in the restaurant downstairs from our motel – he seemed to be able to play any request and even tempted the girls away from the play area to dance!

Byron Bay is a spot we knew we wanted to visit, but quite sensibly decided not to stay given its trendy (i.e. expensive) status. We had a great lunch at Three Blue Ducks at The Farm on route, with onsite horses, chickens and macadamia and pecan nuts in the orchard that you could collect, crack open and enjoy.

In the afternoon we drove on up to the lighthouse lookout for an ice cream and amazing windy views of ten-mile beach.

After photographing the giant prawn at Ballina, we drove on to Iluka, straight to Bluff Beach where we spotted dolphins and at least one shark from the beach.

To keep up our ‘run everywhere we sleep’ mission, I jumped straight out for a run before we had even checked in to our motel, exploring the headland and rainforest (which a few days later would be cut off completely due to a bush fire).

A short walk along the river took us to Sedgers Reef Hotel for a hearty meal of seafood and burgers, rounded off by a blast of hail on the way back to our motel.

We spent a few hours the next day at Coffs Harbour, picking up some picnic bits – Tom finding probably his best pie in Australia – and sharing crumbs with the birds on park beach. Little did we realise our love for Australian beaches would soon be coming to an end as temperatures were dropping the further south we drove.