Ann and I went away for a few days last weekend. It was our second wedding anniversary and she wanted to see a bit more of Australia. Since we had been south a few times now, we decided to go a little way north, places I have seldom been for decades. My father was born in Newcastle and (quite unfairly) I had an aversion to the place.

Newcastle is not a beautiful town but it is much improved since the departure of the steel works, though at some cost to local employment. I remember going on a school trip to BHP in the late sixties, touring the plant, watching the glowing ingots of steel slide over huge rollers. It was and still is a coal town, so dirty was a byword for living there. I recall my grandmothers washing sooting up and the sense that every surface had a thin layer of black dust almost as a permanent feature. But that has changed.

On the way up we stopped in at Wat Pah in Mandalong, a Thai Temple set in glorious bushland. It is affiliated with its Sydney cousins but the setting makes for a deeper experience, if communion with nature is anything to go by. Five monks were completing a liturgy in a kind of basso profundo and we strolled the grounds and had a delicious lunch - a homemade Thai smorgasbord.

Later we set up our digs adjacent Lake Macquarie at Warners Bay, rented bicycles and generally lolled by the shoreline. The following day we drove to Nelson May on Port Stephens, a magnificent natural harbour to the north of Newcastle. It was a feast of touristy activities, including shore walks, headland climbing and dolphin watching. Ann likes to fit a lot of stuff into a day and leaves no stone unturned in this regard, whereas I like to sample this and that and do a lot of thinking and absorbing. But we do really hit it off together.

At Wat Pah and on Port Stephens-