Advertisement
Published: January 31st 2009
Lionel and Janet
Lionel and Janet in their garden Day 84
I was up first as usual, not particularly early as we had a latish night, but around 6.30am. One thing I am not is ever grumpy in the morning; yes it usually comes on throughout the day, but never early in the morning. (I can vouch for that!!). Humans are creatures of habit, and I like mine, I like to stride out of bed and instantly put the kettle on, this is why Caroline “always” gets tea in bed and I never do!! (I just want to note at this point that when Andy affords himself an afternoon kip, I don’t, I usually busy myself doing something).
The camp site in Narrabeen was good, we had found out from Lionel and Janet how it had come to be!! Back when the soldiers came back from the first world war, as their families had nothing, a woman who’s family was called Mary Wheeler, bequeathed the land that the camp site is on providing it always stayed as a camp site.
It is owned by the city council and it can never be anything else other than a camp site, it is a huge piece of land right
Lady Golfer
Sink the Pink ! on the coast. I expect there are a few developers squirming at that bequest this is prime real estate. Big 4 only manage the site under a contract they we awarded for 4 years only, then it will be subject to the usual tender process.
Tea had been had, Caroline was up and went and for her shower, I had sat down in my “Quiet time” and typed out the blog that was done before Caroline had made an appearance. We had been lucky enough to find a WiFi “Hot Spot” without even having to move out of our awning, these are few and far between and great to take advantage of when you find them. I noticed that friends John and Lorraine Butler from Oakley were on line, so I just had to Skype them. The last time I Skyped them I was sitting in the truck at our favourite WiFi Hotspot burger chain at Dubbo and Caroline was still in bed.
Me, John and Lorraine, had about 20 minutes on Skype, then I get bored, (NO ONLY JOKING) then Caroline comes back and gets involved with the Skype session.
So are you getting the picture
Good exercise
Loads of walking in mini golf by now, of my day so far, I get up and do the tea, I wrote the blog, and Skype friends, whilst doing a bit of tidying of the truck. I haven’t showered, shaved, brushed my teeth put fresh cloths on or anything as yet.
With time to spare Caroline has time for a bowl of cereal.
In our remaining few minutes on the site we walk over to Lionel and Janets and take their picture for the blog. Janet has very kindly given Caroline some information on getting over the Sydney Harbour Bridge, the conundrum is how to you get over a Toll bridge that doesn’t have any Toll booths. You have to phone a telephone number, and give them your rego number and surrender some money.
Our first stop out of town is Mini Golf, a “grudge match” Caroline has a disappointing game around the world famous Redbeards course, and goes around in 54, whilst Andy Smoothly glides around with an impressive 47, and the second game it was neck and neck until the last hole Andy and Caroline were pulling out some great shots.
Caroline had said the last hole would be the
The 9th
Serious Stuff here, the atmosphere could be cut with a knife decider, Caroline putted on the 18th, a good strong put uphill about 8 mtrs in to the ships bow, Down in 1, on such a hard shot, Andy had 6 attempts and completely fluffed the game. The final score was Caroline went around in 47 this time and Andy in 54, a pure reversal of the first round.
So for all of you blogging adjudicators the score at this stage of the Australian masters Mini golf pro is Andy 3 Caroline 1 (lulling Andy into a false sense of security)
Just to repeat. Andy 3 Caroline 1 (I repeat - lulling Andy into a false sense of security).
We hit the road towards Sydney, maps in hand and the traffic is busy, but still not as bad as Londn. On the way we pass a shop window for a beautician, she advertises "Don't beat around the bush - go Brazilian". We don’t get out of Sydney until mid day, and it’s a huge city, over the bridge, it’s a fantastic structure, we have never seen it from a road prospective before, it seems to take us ages to get out of town, we are heading towards Canberra.
Bridge Entrance
The Parapitts are the Gateway to the bridge We take the Ocean Drive route which is breath taking, so close to the Ocean, and some of the properties wow!!.
No wonder the drive has taken us so long, start, stop and photo, start stop and photo still this is what it is all about. We stop and have a coffee in Stanwell Park, as I wanted to go to the toilet, Caroline said stop the truck and go in the bush, maybe if I had been on one of my motorcycle trips then It would have been different, but I just felt that I needed a nice comfortable throne to sit on.
We drove on the new Seacliff bridge on the grand pacific drive that had been constructed only a year ago, it is on stilts and sticks out from the landscape, and quite an amazing piece of engineering and architecture. In fact you can see the old road edging the cliff face as we drive round it.
Award-winning Sea Cliff Bridge forms part of the Grand Pacific Drive and is located on scenic Lawrence Hargrave Drive, 60 kms south from central Sydney (or 23 kms north of Wollongong). It was opened on December The Bridge
Impressive steel Structure 11, 2005, at a total cost of A$52 million. The Bridge provides road, pedestrian and cycleway access it's entire length (665 metres) and spectacular views. Like the Bridge, Grand Pacific Drive never loses sight of the sea. It hugs the coast between the high battlements of the Illawarra Escarpment, looming like the great wall of a lost world, and the vastness of the Tasman Sea, an ocean view so wide you can see the curve of the Earth. Looking south, the coast is scalloped with bays, all the way to Wollongong and beyond.
We stopped to look at a memorial to a Teacher called Mike Dwyer, who was one of those people who grabbed hold of life and shook it by the throat, he campaigned for many things locally, but sadly illness finally took him away, at quite a young age. His memorial was at a place called Bulli Beach, which I thought was one of the most beautiful places on god’s earth.
We drove on, stop Photo, start stop photo, and came to a lighthouse situated at we heard planned to go through Wollongong and then on to Nowra and stay their for a couple of days
Bridge Painter
Paul (Crocodile Dundee) use to paint this bridge as a job bfore he found fame. so we could scope it out and have a bit of a nose around. On our drive down, the electronic overhead signs indicated that the Pacific Highway was closed at Kiama, hoping that the highway was now reopened and thought that we should phone ahead to a camp site at Nowra to ask if they had any spaces.
They did have spaces, however, the lady asked where we were, when we told her she said, “I think you should find a camp site before you get to Kiama, you won’t find a way through”, explaining that a truck had shed its load of steel and the Pacific Highway was closed in both directions, the information she had was that the pacific highway would be closed until late evening at the earliest.
After this phone call had just ended I spotted a sign for camping at Shellharbour, we headed towards this sign and soon came upon the camp site.
I never go in, I always leave it to Caroline to sort this out, and made a joke about the fact that she by now knows all the questions you need to ask in securing a site, what places
What a view
View over looking Stanwell Park township from Ottford lookout do you have available, how much, what internet access, how secure, blah blah.
The camp site assistant “Sheila”, no not the camp Sheila, but the camp assistant called Sheila, said that some one had just cancelled who was stuck in the traffic on the Pacific Highway, and they had one pitch that was next to the Ocean, they had others but only that one right next to the ocean. Obviously it was slightly more expensive, but where do you card a pitch with a back yard that is the Pacific Ocean.
We pulled up to pitch T1, it was baking hot but very windy, blowing in off the sea. The trailer is easy to put up, wind or not, but the awning is another matter, its like trying to tame a stallion whilst balancing a golf ball on the top of your head.
Pole by pole the awing went up, and eventually got it in to some form of semblance once it was all done we had a sandwich and shot out to, lets just say WIFI central that was only a klick away down the road to uploaded the blog for the day before, Diamond princess.
The Patrol towing home
Our Patrol towing our home, just a good shot We got back about 11.00 o’clock, had a quick look at the ocean and slipped in to bed, the sound of the Pacific is hypnotic and I must have been asleep in 10 seconds flat as usual, and I am reliably informed that Caroline took 10-15 minutes as usual.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.134s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 13; qc: 28; dbt: 0.0407s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
