Chichester State Forest

Although our Easter long weekend wasn't quite as long as most (work of course), we still had three days off and decided it was high time we tried out the (not-so-new) Turbo Tent. So we loaded up the BT once again and headed up to Chichester State Forest.

The Forest is located at the southern end of the Barrington Tops National Park (inland from Newcastle). It seems like a very old forest - full of huge, buttress-rooted trees and everything covered in moss. It also happened to be very popular - our intended 4WD-only camping spot was packed full of other long-weekenders. We ended up driving through most of the forest, checking out every camp-ground, before we finally found an empty corner for our tent.

Having said that, most other campers seemed content to lounge around their fires drinking beer, so we found that when we ventured out on a couple of walks, we pretty much had the place to ourselves.

As you can see, there was plenty of water to play around photographing...

On the first night, as the fire was burning low and we were contemplating bed, we were surprised by a couple of paddy wagons, which pulled up into the campground and pretty much surrounded our site (like there was no escape...). Four cops jumped out and huddled together - we thought they must be doing random checks or drug tests or something. Just as we were starting to get a bit nervous, they pulled out an esky and came over to ask us if they could share our fire. Turns out they were doing 24hr patrols all weekend because of trouble in previous years (like cars driving through tents), and that we had the quietest campsite in the forest - an ideal spot in their opinion to have a bit of dinner :)

Oh - and the Turbo Tent was great.