Nambucca Heads

We have a leisurely start to the day, John picked up his new car on Friday and we are embarking on this roadtrip on the Sunday.  Not much time to get familiar with things, also the new Car - called "George" is Electric, a whole new ball game for us.  First trial is packing, can we fit in the clubs and trolleys, as we are 3 passengers on the way back, we need to cater for that going there.

The car packs well and golf carts and clubs are going, we have tried to limit to one suit case and lots of little bags, but that is just for convenience, so we are not lugging 2 big suitcases into everywhere we stay.  We have one big suitcase and then bags for golf, walking and summer clothes.

The journey would take us 4 hrs 53 mins by petrol car (this doesnt allow for any refuelling or pit stops), and according to the Tesla App with charging intervals we can do it in 6 hrs allowing for a charge in Heatherbrae taking 25 mins and a top up at Port MacQuarie for 15 mins.  So an hour longer, we arent in a rush - it's an adventure.  Its also worth mentioning that we havent started with a 100% topped up battery.

John, quite rightly thought that the car would come with a travel charger, they used to!  That stopped about a year ago.  Luckily Jude has one and we have borrowed it.

Car packed, Coffees made and off we go.  The car has to callibrate its cameras, this takes about 45 km, until then you do not have any of the smarts like self drive, parking, cruise control etc.  Once we hit the Callibration milestone, the gadgets are in play.  The cruise control is nothing special, just like most modern cars nowadays, its adaptive.  We did think that it would read the speed camera and adjust automatically but I don't think that exists.

The car is extremely comfortable and very very smooth on the road.  It takes you a few goes to get used to one pedal driving - yes, the brakes are only for emergencies.  Once you take your foot off the accelerator pedal the car brakes.  It's a bit weird but you get used to it very quickly.

We get to our first charging stop in Heatherbrae.  Its between a petrol station and a Motel, there are 6 superchargers - which if you read about them they can give you a full charge in 20 mins.  That is if there is no-one else parked there and no limitation.  I guess the network is set up to give you your first 200km fast and then it slows down for the next 100 and so on.  I only suspect that this is to encourage people to have 10 minute charges and not 20 minute ones - share the charging power.

When we get there it is full, but each charger has two cables, so I think we will just use the other cable.  But the Charging cables are really short, so John had to maneouvre the car so that the cable would fit.  He was basically parked perpendicular to the Parallel park, I should have twigged that this was not normal!  When we finally get the cable to reach, the plug doesn't fit.  I ask someone and they said no we need to use the other cable - those were all taken.  Whilst we were arsing about, I think 2 cars went and others took their spot.  So we had to wait for a spot.  One frees up pretty quickly and John gets us charging.

It's also a bit like caravaning, you make friends at the Super chargers whilst you wait around for your car to top up.  We met a young lad from Brisbane, he was helping us with our first charge!

Car is charging, we go in hunt of a coffee shop.  There is not much around, except for the service station coffee - as we sit down, I notice that the Car has stopped charging and we cannot restart it from the app.  So John goes off to work out what is going on - once the coffees come I go and help.  We cannot work it out, so we stopped the current charge and started a new one and she was off again.  In no time we have a good charge, then we continue on our journey.  According to the app, we are stopping in Port Macquarie for a little top up at the Cassegrain Winery.  

It is now time to try out the autopilot, which was daunting but fun.  Its quite hard to trust an app that is in Beta and you are driving at 120kph.  But it works. See the short video below:

We are merrily playing with the autopilot function, upping the ante with lane changing and speed limit reading.  The lane changing took a little bit of getting used to as in the Mazda, to change the lane you just touch the indicator up or down depending on direction and it indicates for about 8 tick tocks and then its off.  It is super handy and we use it a lot.  For George to change lanes on autopilot you need to fully engage the indicator, and George is a gentleman and changes lanes at a gentleman's pace!  We didn't realise this and John was giving the indicator a nudge instead of a firm click and George would start changing lane and then when the indicator stopped (because it was not fully engaged) he would swerve back into his lane thinking it was an error.  So anyone driving down the Pacific highway yesterday may have seen a white Tesla making a few jerky erratic lane changes.

We have not conquered the speed limit reading, but we still have many kilometers to learn that one.

As I said earlier, we are supposed to stop at Cassagrain, but all of a sudden we are going straight to Nambucca Heads, no stop required.  The App has worked this all out and we will arrive at Nambucca Heads with 5% charge remaining.  That is way too stressful, so we detoured to Cassagrain Winery for a Super Charge and a Wine tasting.  Unfortunately, the Restaurant closed down last week-end, so again not much there - although there was a warehouse sale, but we didn't fancy anything.  So 15 mins later we were fully charged and off again.

Arriving at Nabucca, by about 4pm.  We checked into our little apartment for the next 2 nights.

Cassagrain Winery

Nambucca Heads Apartment

The apartment is perfect for us, it has a huge Spa bath, I mean HUGE!  So big, that the hot water tank isnt big enough to fill it so by the time we got in, it was a little chilly.  A great night's rest, after a tense evening watching the entire final round of the Scottish Open - Gosh that was so exciting.  The car is charged to 100%, thanks to Jude's cable.  Then breakfast and off to golf at Nambucca Island Golf Course.  This was recommended to us by Annette, and boy did she delight.  The morning started a bit overcast, but by the time we teed off it was amazing, and so warm.

The course is on Stuart Island, The par 69 (Men) 70 (Ladies), 18 hole layout designed by Ross Watson is both a challenge and a great experience. It is a flat easy walk on fairways lined with she oak and paper bark trees.  Their Bent Grass greens are amazing, and the course was in brilliant condition.  As with a lot of country courses the off fairway is a bit bumpy and Nambucca is no different.  They have gravel paths which are so bumpy my buggy battery dislodged not once but twice.  Here are some photos, really absolutely gorgeous.  Oh and I played well, maybe that had something to do with it!!!

A lunch at the club house, which has a lovely location and then home via the supermarket.  We hear the Wimbledon Final was a corker, so we will settle in for a night of tennis.  Whilst having lunch, we checked the cars inside temperature and it was 40ºc, so we cooled it down so that it was a pleased 21ºc when we got in - that was very nice.

Tomorrow we are off to Brisbane for a couple of nights.