Marty and I had our little getaway a bit early this year and it was wonderful as always. In previous years, we have headed away in June or July for a mini winter break but when we saw the line up for Summer Salt in Port Macquarie in April this year, it was hard to say no!

Some of our absolute favourite bands were performing for the afternoon, so we booked tickets and drove down on a very rainy Wednesday for a few nights away. We stayed with Uncle Faryl and Aunty Mon at Laurieton on our first night, then had a cuppa and a chat with Topher’s Dad Thursday morning, then checked into our delightful little AirBNB before hitting up some op-shops (of course we did) for some bargains in the afternoon. We headed down to the water with some bubbly and cheese and crackers and watched the surfers and footy boys training and families down by the beach.

We picked up some Thai on the way home that was absolutely delicious, and settled in for the evening to watch the footy. The next day we packed a bag and set off to do the 9km Coastal Walk from Port Macquarie to Tacking Point Lighthouse. It was such a great walk! One of the best we have ever done in my opinion. There was a great variety of terrain including bush, stairs, a bit of rock-hopping, a shelly beach, a couple of sandy beaches, some parts were out in the open and some stretches were in a canopy of trees.

There was just so much to see and enjoy along the way. We took about 3.5 hours to complete the walk and reeeeeeeeeeeeeally enjoyed our late lunch back at Port afterwards. We picked Beth up from the airport (she asked if she could come along when she saw the bands!) and while she went for a walk we headed to a Tesla charging station with some cheese and bikkies and a cheeky wine and played some Backgammon! Very relaxing after our big walk.

We headed out for delicious dumplings for dinner and got our game plan ready for the next day. We had a yummy, albeit slow service brunch, though we had lots of time to kill, then we walked around to wait to get in to the festival. The lineup consisted of Josh Pyke, The Waifs, The Whitlams, Dempsey/Fanning National Park, Missy Higgins and John Butler. Can you even???

The crowd was HUGE with a sell-out of over 6000 people including families with kids, many people around our age group, and quite a few grey nomads as well. We were able to bring our own camping chairs and were among the first couple of hundred people in, so we got as close as our non-premium tickets allowed us. When standing up, we could see very well but we were aware that we would block the view of others behind us, so we sat for most of it and the sound was fantastic so we didn’t feel like we were missing out on anything.

I don’t think I stopped smiling for eight hours straight. It was fantastic to see Josh Pyke and The Waifs, both for the first time ever; The Whitlams were their brilliant selves and Tim Freedman played my favourite song, Melbourne as well as quite a few of their older tunes which I LOVED; Dempsey/Fanning were fantastic together; Missy Higgins absolutely KILLED IT, playing quite a few songs from her incredible new album as well as some beautiful classics; and John Butler is a ridiculously talented musician and had the crowd on their feet.

We were home before 10pm and crashed into bed full of the joy of making wonderful memories. We got away around 8:30am Sunday morning and after an easy drive we arrived home to very content kids by about 4pm. They had stayed home with Gran and Grumpy looking after them, and of course had a lovely time. As always, we are grateful for their help and love and support and to be able to have a few days away is always a gift. We will be keeping an eye out for future Summer Salt line-ups but honestly, I’m not sure how we could possibly top this one!!