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Published: January 29th 2007
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Coast line
Looking back on where we had just been as we made our way to Wollongong, our first stop. Following the previous weeks research into Car Hire we found Hertz to be the cheapest (that's why they're #1, I guess). Our car was a Ford Falcon Automatic, we don't have these in England but would probably say that a Mondeo is the closest we get to it. We can be seen glamourously modelling it in one of the photos. Steve, being the Dad of the group did all the driving. Once we had picked up the car from the city and successfully got it to Marrickville we packed the trunk and set off onto the open road (well, not quite straight away, we were driving around for about an hour trying to get out of Sydney without a map and no helpful signposts). Keira had lent us a book listing the youth hostels on the journey down to Melbourne and we followed that starting with a short car journey to Wollongong (which, despite the stupid name, is New South Wales's 3rd largest city). We stopped a couple of times to take in the views and ice cream, and hit Thirroul beach for an hour or so since it was a nice day. Thirroul beach
Coast line
Where we are heading to, Wollongong is further to the left. was actually closed the following day because of bluebottles (or Portugese Man o'War, just go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portuguese_Man_o%27_War), nothing, I'm sure, to do with Steve urinating in the sea.
Our hostel in Wollongong was really nice purpose-built and modern, containing a full kitchen, bunk beds and a double bed. We headed out that night to get a taste of the nightlife, unfortunately as it was a Monday night the taste had less flavour then water, but we ended up in quite a busy pub where we were able to get food and have a couple of frmaes on the superstrike bowling machine.
Checkout from the hostel was 10am and we got on the road pretty quickly. England were playing New Zealand today so took a short drive down to Kiama, famed for it's blowhole (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blowhole_%28geology%29), it was quite unimpressive but we did catch the moneyshot on camera. After bacon sandwiches and a couple of beers watching the cricket we set off near the end of the first innings to our next destination...Bateman's Bay.
Upon arriving we soon realised how lucky we had got in the previous hostel. Today we were staying in a caravan with bunk beds and
Coast line
You can see a bit more here, bridge is to the right, whilst Wollongong is where the plume of smoke is coming from on the left. a toilet, lovely! We didn't stay in for long as we headed pretty much straight out to find a suitable place to watch the climax of the cricket. Remarkably we won our first cricket match of the summer; I celebrated with a couple of beers and a Lasagne. After dinner we went for a short walk along the bay and ended up in The Soldiers Club, like an RSL except we had to stand up to honour the people who have given their lives for Australia in every war at sundown. We also found our first dartboard here but unfortunately we didn't have our darts and there were none behind the bar.
Checked out of the caravan at about 9:30 and headed back on ourselves to a place called Pebbly Beach where we were promised lots of Kangeroos. A journey up a dirt track, and down a steep hill took us to Pebbly Beach and to where there was not a Kangeroo in sight, just a nice beach which was not pebbly just sand. A long jump competition later (Steve won) saw us back on the road, down the dirt track again where we saw a wallaby jumping by
Coast line +3
A scenic team line up the side of the road and a massive Lizard probably a metre top to tail, cross in front of us.
Our next stop south was to be Merimbula, but as we hadn't been on a beach for a couple of days we stopped off at Cuttagee, which was amazing, really big waves, lots of sand and absolutely nobody around, fantastic. It also gave us our first chance to play Beach Cricket. Our hostel this night was textbook, communal shower block bunk beds and even had table tennis, at which Steve got lucky to beat me, but no luck was involved when I beat Rich 3-0. That night we headed over to an RSL club for dinner which was really nice, but with us having our darts out this time, predictably had no dartboard. We spent the rest of the evening mingling with locals in a pretty busy bar.
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