Yesterday we drove down from Bonny Hills to Elermore Vale in Newcastle to stay with Mark and Lorraine Monkley for a few days as we have a look around Newcastle.

Today is Remembrance Day, so we spent some time doing the Newcastle Memorial Walk along the cliff tops at Shepherds Hill Reserve. The Walk is to honour all Novacastrians who have served Australia in all the wars Australia has fought in. It’s a very special walk with some great ocean views and well worth a visit.

Whilst we were at Shepherds Hill for the walk, which also was used as Radar site by the RAAF in WW2, A RAAF F18 Hornet did a low level fly past along the coast. It was involved in the Remembrance Day service at 1100 and was returning to its base at Williamtown about 20 k’s north of Newcastle. Even after all these years its still pretty speccy to see a Hornet do its stuff!

From there it was over to Fort Scratchley, which is on the headland overlooking the entrance to the Hunter River. The Fort was built way back in the mid 1800’s but its real fame is when its 6 inch guns fired on a Japanese Submarine in WW2 after it had fired shells on Newcastle. At 1300 everyday bar Tuesday they fire off a cannon. We were expecting one of the WW2 to be fired but it was a small 9Ib 100 year old cannon that was used. A bit of a let down but the noise was authentic and I’m sure it could be heard around the city centre.

Having lunch with the Monkley’s in a Newcastle pub, seemed the right way to finish off our Remembrance Day 2020. Tomorrow we’re off to Denman via Morpeth before we spend a few days in Dubbo, in central NSW.