Sandboarding at Port Stephens

The Stockton Bight sand dunes in Port Stephens is the largest in Southern Hemisphere. It stretches 32 km long with some areas up to 1 km wide and 30 m height.

The sand dunes at Anna Bay

The Pyramids of Port Stephens :D

Since our car was not a 4WD, we joined the local sandboarding tour to bring us into the desert. Paid $40 for the transport, including the use of their sandboards.

Our tour van

The ride to the sandboarding location was only ten minutes, and we could stay here as long as we want.

The view from the top of the desert

The highest hill in the vicinity

After experiencing the sandboarding, snow tobogganing seems like a child's play. Since the hill was very steep, it was impossible to brake or slow down as I was gaining so much speed and at the same time I had to keep pressing my legs on the board if I didn't want to topple over.  I was overthrown far from the board a couple of times when I landed.  I always felt nervous when I went down but then I wanted to do it again. :P

My daughter was too young to do it on her own, so she rode down in tandem with her daddy.  She was only stopping after swallowing so much sand when she landed face down hahaha...

Here's the sandboarding video of us.

Sandboarding was really a very tiring activity, I was out of breath after going down a couple of times. Riding down was easy, the tiring part was climbing up the hill. So in the end we only stayed for about half an hour here.

After sandboarding we drove around Port Stephens to explore the area. Our first stop was Gan Gan Hill lookout where we could see other neighbouring islands.

The flowers are Gymea lilies which is a local plant of this area. It could grow up to 6m high.

Another highlight in our trip was when we spotted some pelicans at Little Beach. I've never seen a pelican so up close in my life. They are huge!!

The pelicans!

Sunset with the pelicans