The weekend of Zoe's visit finally arrived and we went to pick her up from Newcastle Airport on Friday evening. The airport is only a 20 minute drive from us and the flight from Melbourne only just over an hour so it makes us feel like Zoe is much closer.
On Saturday morning we walked up Tomaree Head which is in Shoal Bay at the entrance of Port Stephens Bay, the views were fabulous and gave Zoe an idea of the layout of the bay. It's still taking us a while to get our bearings, we can find our way around very easily but when we are standing on a beach we can't work out what township we are looking across at so I don't know how much Zoe was able to take in. I have included a map this time to show where things are on the bay.
We then trotted in to Nelson Bay which was very busy because there was a marlin fishing competition underway and, as usual musicians were playing along the harbour to people queuing to board their dolphin cruises. 
After that we went to pick Ian up from a talk on building kitchens at the hardware store, and we all carried on to Birubi Point which is the beginning of Stockton Beach (32km long with massive sand dunes) and watched camel riders and 4WD tours making their way through the dunes.
Monty had been home alone for a while so we went and picked him up and took Zoe on one of our regular evening walks. Ian suddenly pointed up and there was a koala, bold as brass looking down at us. He wasn't even hiding in the leaves, it is very unusual to see koalas as clearly as this, it was as if we had planted him there specially for Zoe's visit!
We finished the day with an excellent dinner at Club Lemon Tree and retired ready for another busy one.
Sunday saw us showing Zoe our favourite beaches and nature reserves in our little township and as we were going along Ian spotted a metre long goanna beside the road. We have never seen one of these here, the animals must have just come out in Zoe's honour.