I'm finally sorting through the photos from our last trip up the coast, at a time when another trip home is already drawing near.

These little snippets and video are from Eden, our first stop up the road and one of my favourite places in New South Wales. It's quiet, isolated, calm ... a town in a world of it's own. It's fibro 50s beach houses with Hills Hoists in the backyards and whalebones in the front. It's the one pub on the hill and local folk lore. It's fishermen and divers and a community controlled by its sea.

We swim, dive, fish, and drive around, visit waterfalls and rocky coastal outcrops. I always collect some kind of treasure - sea urchins, kangaroo bones, abalone shells. I always drink and eat too much. Strange animals appear consistently: octopus, seals, penguins, dolphins, eagles, stingrays, black swans, whales. The chiming bell birds are a constant reminder of where you are, and where you are going. That's the sound of the southern roadside town - the sound of halfway home, whichever way we're headed.