Blogs from New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 10

After packing up at our farm stay, we drove south through to Wallabadah along the New England Highway, turning right and driving through the town of Quirindi. As we exited Quirindi we passed a couple of horse and sulkies heading into town, which was a bit of a blast from the past. My blacksmithing grandfather and father made and repaired sulkies and carts in our family Blacksmith Shop. I didn’t think anything more of this coincidental meeting until I reached Wellington and did more extensive research on the Cullen genealogy. We stopped in Dunedoo for lunch, and followed the GPS to take the Comobella Road to Wellington. Unfortunately the Comobella Bridge had been damaged in the recent floods, and was impassable, leaving us with a long detour via Wongarbon. This long detour did however, take us ... read more

The Waterfall Way runs from Coffs Harbour to Armidale, and guess what. There are lots of waterfalls to view along the way. We explored the key waterfalls in the Dorrigo area, and now headed further up onto the New England plateau, aiming to stay in Tamworth. First stop was Ebor Falls, followed by Wollomombi Falls, both relatively quick stopovers. We also passed Thunderbolts Rock near Uralla, which was a famous lookout post for bushranger Captain Thunderbolt, who was partial to robbing the mail coaches as they passed by. Thunderbolt had escaped from the notorious Cockatoo Island prison, and he wasn't planning on going back there in a hurry. He was eventually shot by an off duty policeman, who had shot his horse from under him. We stopped off for lunch in Armidale, and were impressed with ... read more

Staying on the Coffs Coast was an opportunity to revisit some of the places where we had enjoyed family holidays down through the years. It was also an opportunity to explore some family history. The family history exploration unfolded into a personal episode from the SBS series of Who Do You Think You Are. We randomly chose to stay at Sawtell Caravan Park, where we discovered on arrival, the Sawtell Historical Society office attached to the Park Office. After noting that the Historical Society was open the next day, we took a drive around Sawtell and Coffs Harbour to check out the beaches, creeks and ocean baths, as we were eager to get in the water. We were a bit nervous about swimming in the ocean in the Ballina area. First stop the next day was ... read more

DISASTER!!!!!! Early start today, got up at 5:30am to get ready for our airport transfer at 6:30am. Our friendly Nascar driver greeted us in the hotel reception 5 mins early, with a much newer minibus this time and we set off for a much calmer drive (he didn’t have rush hour to contend with today!). Arrived at the airport and dropped our bags, whizzed through security and got settled in the lounge for breakfast. Maybe we’re becoming snobs, but the lounge wasn’t anywhere near as nice as the one in Heathrow, but that’s OK, we’d only be there a couple of hours. All was going great. Then disaster struck, 15 mins before we were due to board the dreaded announcement was made that our flight was delayed by 4 hours. So, with the 2 hours we ... read more

It will come as no surprise to hear that we managed to get to sleep very easily last night! We still woke up very early but felt totally refreshed and ready for a day of exploring in the sunshine. After walking around Darling Harbour yesterday we set off in the other direction to Circluar Quay this morning to find somewhere for breakfast. Found a lovely place down by the docks and ate alfresco while enjoying views of Sydney Harbour Bridge. There were so many people around, a combination of workers pouring in from the Metro station ready for a day in the office and travellers arriving on the massive Royal Caribbean cruise ship which was parked up in the docks. Our plan for today was to get some hop on-hop off bus tickets from the Big ... read more