Dave's Birthday Blog (With A Bit Either Side) - The Hunter Valley, Sydney And The Blue Mountains.

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Driving in Australia is a doddle. But that’s not to say we weren’t a little vexed to learn that, because of the darn rain and closure of a part of the highway, we needed to drive 800kms to get to a town only 50kms away. We reached the road closure blockade at around 3pm (at just the same time the television crews were arriving to report it having closed), turned around and arrived back at the same caravan park we’d left that morning at 7pm. The following day we got up, Dave drove, I drove and 650km later we went to bed. We spoke to plenty of people who were having to make the same journey because of the flooding. The only person who was happy about it was the owner of the caravan park where we and many other disgruntled motorists spent the night. Even during my whinging he couldn’t keep the smirk from his face. Git.

The next day was much, much better. The detour meant we were travelling through the Hunter Valley, which has about a million wineries. I always thought that tasting lots of wine from one of these places would make me feel obliged to buy something from them. Turns out it doesn’t! I think they’re used to people like me saddling up to the bar, tasting anything I’m given and staggering back out. We went on a tour at one of the wineries and learnt a bit about the ridiculously laborious wine-making process (which culminates in one bloke tasting samples of each and every barrel. Career change, anyone?) followed by a lovely lunch at a little village. For me it made the whole detour worthwhile. Perhaps not for Designated Driver Dave though…

The following day we visited the Myall Lakes National Park, which as the name suggests, is a National Park with a lake in it. Having driven to a lookout where all we could see was fog, attempted a walk where all we could see were dirt tracks and followed the ‘tourist drive’ to the point where it became unsealed and therefore not suitable for the campervan, we decided to call it a day. On the way out of the park I narrowly avoided mowing down some woman who was stood in the road. By all accounts, not a very sensible place to loiter. As we passed her though we saw she was actually watching over a snake (a diamond python no less, which, so we were told, is dangerous ‘only if you put your hand in its mouth’. Something both Dave and I resisted with relative ease). We pottered out and had a gander before Dave scared it away and it mosied on back to his snake home.

We stayed in a plush caravan park that night and played tennis on the outdoor court into the early evening. Before long a small group of 4 adults and a dog had gathered. Assuming for sometime that they wished to feel better about their own game, we carried on as normal, before realising that their focus was infact not at the net, but in the tree. There was only a lovely, fuzzy, cuddly koala up there! Munching away he was. As far as I can gather, eating and sleeping is about all they do (species change, anyone?) as leaves give them so little by way of nutritional value and energy that they snooze up to 20 hours a day, and chomp through the other 4. Now consider the behavioural traits of a koala, and now consider the behavioural traits of Dave. Makes you question Darwin’s theory of evolution doesn’t it?

After a long soak in the jacuzzi, we watched Legends of the Fall, which I think we might have enjoyed was it not for the fact that the DVD kept skipping (e.g. from a family happily chugging along in a car to several people being dead) and the man sat along from Dave kept making weird nasal sounds (just blow your bloody nose you moron).

Back on the main highway having completed our detour we visited a place called Port Stephens so we could go on a whale watching tour. Not only did we score half price tickets because it was the first official day of the season, we even won a raffle prize! (A photography book and two locally brewed beers.) That said, the seeing of whales bit wasn’t quite as successful. There are restrictions to protect the migrating humpbacks and so boats must stay at least 100 metres away and for a maximum of 30 minutes. We did see a couple - though only the tails - and to accompany this sighting we had two commentaries: that of the captain, and that of the dotty old woman stood next to Dave. The captain’s was informative and varied, the woman’s went something like ‘ohhh, well, would you look at that… oh, look…. Would you look at that… oh, well….. look, well, yes, well…’. Every single time the whale surfaced she prattled on, saying the same thing over and over and over… It got to the point where I would have rather not caught sight of any whales just so she’d shut up. The whales clearly thought the same as that was as about as good as the sightings got. On the way back we spotted some bottlenose dolphins. Not bad for £15.

That afternoon we drove on to a place called Manly, on the coast not far from Sydney. Unfortunately we couldn’t stay long as it was a certain someone’s birthday in a couple of days and we had a reservation with a rather swish 5 star hotel. The following morning we begrudgingly abandoned Agrabah the campervan, in a leafy street of a Sydney suburb called Chatswood and caught the 30-minute train to the city.

It’s Dave writing this now. Helen has asked me to write up the little bit about my birthday as, well, it was my birthday and it makes more sense if I tell you about it! At least that’s what she says. I think we all know that the reality is that, having already spent 14 days putting off doing the blog, me writing this little bit is the only way the darn thing is going to get finished!

The 5-star hotel we’d booked up was the lovely Swissotel, located right in the centre of Sydney. We wouldn’t usually have splashed out on such luxury for a birthday (on Helen’s birthday we’d stayed somewhere that had cost £30 a night), but we’d managed to find a decent deal and it seemed too good to turn down.

After awkwardly walking through the hotel lobby wearing our backpacks and scruffy looking clothes, we checked in and were surprised to be given a free voucher for lunch. So, we quickly went up stairs, dumped our bags and came back down for lunch - the nicest steak I’ve had all trip and maybe even the best meal!

Staying at the Swissotel was a bit like staying in our campervan, with a few small differences. At the Swissotel the massive bathroom was attached to our room, rather than requiring a 5-minute walk in the dark to get to. Also, the hotel had air-conditioning, meaning that the temperature in the room was decided by you, rather than just the weather outside. Finally, whist moving around the hotel room not once did I elbow Helen in the face (well, not by accident anyway) nor did we wake up in the night crushed against each other as we both tried to find a little space. Finally, for the first time in several weeks I also got to get changed whilst standing up. Yes!

Needless to say we had a great couple of days. On the day before my birthday (my ‘birthday eve’ as Helen calls it), we walked to Kings Cross as we’d been told that it was a good area to go to for some birthday drinks. Clearly, the bloke who had told us this was more thinking for himself, rather than us, as when we arrived we found it was full of strip clubs, dodgy looking pubs and takeaways. Probably fine for a dirty single man, but maybe not the best place to go with your girlfriend.

Having dumped Helen at the nearest shoe shop, I went back to Kings Cross and had a great evening… no, only joking….

That evening we had a dip in the hotels hot tub (it was too cold for swimming) and played a game of trivial pursuit that was 50p with a Macdonald’s meal we’d bought (yes, I know, we shouldn’t eat it!). The dip in the spa was nice, but the game of trivial pursuit was less rewarding - it contained questions like ‘what colour is grass?’, ‘what is your neck attached to?’ and ‘how many hands do you have?’. Yes, all the questions were a little too hard for us.

I woke up on my birthday with someone knocking at my door and Helen poking me and telling me to get up. Upon opening the door I was pleased to find a happy looking lady with a large tray in her hand containing breakfast for two! Helen had sneakily managed to order pancakes and French toast, without me knowing and as expected it was lovely! Feeling nicely full we then walked to ‘the rocks’, went to the Sydney Opera house, had a curry and a Sunday roast for lunch (well, I had a curry, Helen had a roast - it was a food court) before taking a evening cocktail cruise on the river.

I’d expected the term ‘cocktail cruise’ to be a rather over-the-top term for ‘bunch of people on top of a boat with one free drink included’ - after all it had only cost £30 each. I was therefore surprised to see lots of people dressed up in suits and dresses as we arrived. I was even more surprised when we were shown to our own table and finally most surprised when I saw how incredibly expensive any further drinks would be! Having eaten some pretentious (and pretty horrible) canapés we headed out onto the top deck. There we stayed, just the two of us, for virtually the whole cruise. Sounds romantic, but the only reason we really went up there was that we were embarrassed to be sitting downstairs with everyone else, when we couldn’t afford any drinks.

To finish my birthday, we went for some tapas and lastly to the Casino, where we quickly lost £5! Good times!

Helen back now. You can stop trying to find spelling mistakes. Dave is insisting that I continue the blog and write about the ‘Blue Mountains’, some mountains that we visited not far from Sydney. He says that I don’t want to write about them because I’m currently reading a book by Danny Wallace (the one that was made into a film with Jim Carrey) but really I don’t want to write about them because sod all happened. But because I’m a good girlfriend (i.e. do what I’m told) I will write about the Blue Mountains.

We drove to the Blue Mountains. It was foggy. We stayed in a horrible caravan park where it was so cold that during dinner you could see your breath. During the night the temperature dropped really low (near zero) and despite wearing two pairs of trousers, two pairs of socks, two t-shirts and two fleeces, my blood froze. The next morning we woke up late, checked out of the campsite and ate breakfast in a car park. We then decided to visit some lookout points - what better to do on a foggy day in high altitude? Turns out we, just like other humans, are not able to see though dense white mist and so the viewpoints were a complete waste of time. Lunch was awful and the over priced truffles from the ‘boutique’ chocolate shop down the road were also crap.

And that was Blue Mountains. Have a good day - I’m off to read Danny Wallace.

Dave again now. See, this is what you get if you interrupt Helen whist she’s in the middle of reading. A barrage of negativity. Actually, the Blue Mountains weren’t half as bad as she says. Yes, they were cold and cloudy, but I thought we did a nice bit of walking around and saw some good waterfalls…Certainly worth the short trip up there. So don’t listen to her!

Helen again, again, one more thing - during our time in the Blue Mountains we spent an absolute age sitting in a freezing cold garage waiting for some mechanic to fix the campervans second battery. Can’t believe I forgot to include that the first time round. It was such a hoot.

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