Central Coast

We've spent the last couple of weekends exploring the Central Coast. This is a stretch of coast an hour north of Sydney  (from the Hawksbury River north). The first weekend was spent with the Flowers and the Forrests in a hotel in Terrigal - a small resort with fabulous beaches. On the second weekend just the two of us went off camping in Budgewoi, a narrow stretch of land between a lake and the sea. In many ways the scenery is no different from other areas of the NSW coastline, in other words ….stunning! What sets it apart, certainly from Sydney, is the suburban hinterland. It might be stating the obvious but things are so much more relaxed than in the big city -  people are able give you the time of day. Things are a lot friendlier and it worries us that we are getting the wrong impression of what Australians are really like. I suppose it's a big philosophical question - what is the real Australia? Is it the rich mix of first generation immigrants  all desperately trying to get a foothold in the busy city? Or is it the relaxed, established Australians of European extraction? TV and films suggest the latter and so inevitably it was the picture we had in our minds before we came out. We're finding out that the truth is more complicated - which has to be one of the benefits of living in a place (as opposed to merely visiting).