All the Fours

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DAY 444


Susan was just walking out the door this morning on her way to work, we wished her a good day at work and she wished us a safe trip and said that we would see her on Wednesday night.

You could just tell the way the day blossomed that it was going to be a scorcher, so the order of the day was to jump to it and get ready to go to Sydney for a couple of days.

I would like you to appreciate this, I think we are very open and honest people, back home our home always had something going on, a party, dinner, somebody staying, as we never had children by design our friends became the focal point of our world and they always kept us busy.

Anyway, in our new life in Australia, it is quiet the opposite we don’t yet have a home to invite people in but we are astounded how generous all our friends are over here, and their willingness to do what we always did in the UK which was to make people welcome in to our home.

Our reason for being in Sydney is because I have an interview and if you want work then you have got to put the effort in and get around to all these interviews wherever they maybe.

On our trip around Australia we have made lots of new friends, I don’t know why but we just seem to click with some people but they all don’t live in the same place, so sensibility tells us that when we are in a place where we have friends we have to do our very best to see them, sadly this is not always possible and our trip to Sydney will not allow us to see Bill and Janet Kelly, or the Bowman’s who have been reading our blog and we have never met, but invited us to see them when we were in the area, but the great thing is we are not far away from them all in Canberra and hopefully it will give us time to see them again.

So the trailer that we brought back from Woodstock last night had to be unpacked, as things were mixed up, we obviously don’t want to take certain things with us to Sydney, like the swag so that will need to be taken off the roof and put in the garage temporarily.

Well stuff was shifted about and again we only packed one case and I loaded it on to the roof rack, parked the trailer in the most sensible position and after locking the house, making sure the city dogs had plenty of water we hit the road.

Our blog title today is “All the fours”, amazing we have been travelling for Four Hundred and Forty Four days now.

After filling up with diesel and scooping out the Exhibition Centre Camp Site (as we are only allowed to stay 28 days max on the Canberra Motor Village) Caroline navigated us on to Highway 23 heading towards Gouldburn and Sydney, we were excited as we were going to see and stay with Jan and Ted Davies, who we met in the Warrumbungle National Park back in January 2009, and they have been followers of our travels throughout the trip, always sending messages and advice on where to go.

We have been invited to stay Monday night and Tuesday night as my meeting is on Wednesday, but we haven’t seen Jan and Ted since we were up in Cairns and we saw them on blog day. 273, 6th August 2009, blog title “We Have No Egrets, The Horses Have Them All.”

We had brief stop for a quick bite of lunch in Gouldburn, everywhere was busy as tomorrow is Australia Day, it is a national Holiday and a lot of people are on the road today. We see a giant Merino sheep across the landscape and go and take some photo’s

After our “bun on the run” we hit the road again, we still have a good couple of hours to go and we want to get there in good time as we haven’t seen Jan and Ted for a while and want to maximize our time with them.

Well it was a lovely journey across to Sydney, motorway most of the way but still the scenery was really good. Caroline spent nearly all of the journey on the phone or on the laptop, sorting out details for her starting working on Thursday and spent some time researching not for anything in particular but just things of interest and finally brought an electronic map up to find the road that we were looking for.

As usual Caroline is navigating and gets us bang on right to their door step without missing a beat, and soon the Patrol is parked and we are inside catching up on all that has been happening in each others lives, except that once again they know all about ours as they have read the blog!

Jan and Ted’s house is in one of the slightly older parts of Sydney, a long while ago it used to be a dairy farm, but if you look around at the scenery it is long past being a dairy farm you can see for miles, the view is amazing as they are on the top of a hill, we stand out on the front veranda and look around, Ted tells us that we will be able to see fireworks from here tomorrow night for Australia Day celebrations.

On the rear veranda we can see Rainbow Lorikeets arrive and sit around chatting to each other, with the occasional spotted turtle dove and Cockatoo into the mix. Down below we look into the garden and out across the lovely swimming pool that in this heat looks inviting, I wonder how cold it is.

Within a blink of an eye it is 7.30 and we are beckoned to sit at the dinner table as dinner is served, Jan has done a lasagne, which we both love, we sit and talk some more and after desert, we settle back down in their lovely sitting room and do what we do best which was again talk even more.

Soon its is just past 10.00pm we have had a full on day and I am knackered, Jan and Ted are late people and won’t go to bed until midnight, but at the moment that is too late for me, especially today after the long drive into Sydney.

Tomorrow being Australia day we should have another fun packed day so I will say good night.

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Photos

Strapping Down
The 2nd Spare wheel