With our daughter having to travel to New Zealand for four days for work (so soon after her overseas work trip to Vienna), we offered to head back to the Central Coast to help out with shuffling the grandkids around to pre-school. school and work, and cooking some meals. It was good to reconnect with the family, and fortunately, we were able to alter our travel bookings. After a week helping out, we headed back down south via Kangaroo Valley, where we stopped off for morning tea. We then continued our journey to collect our caravan from Cambewarra (near Nowra), where Kim’s sister-in-law had kindly offered to store our van for the week, and then on to a small coastal village called Broulee. We had never heard of Broulee, until we met up with some travellers ... read more

It was less than a half hour drive to Lake Conjola, our next planned south coast stay. Being too early for our caravan park check in, we kept driving through to the picturesque town of Milton, where we topped up on groceries. In heading back to Lake Conjola, we noticed the numerous dead gum trees lining the road, evidence of a recent very hot fire. In researching the extent of the 2019 bushfires in the area, it was sobering to find out that Lake Conjola had lost 89 homes in that bushfire, including three lost lives. It was good to again be staying in the same caravan park as our friends Tracey and David. After setting up our caravan, we all enjoyed a swim in the lake channel that runs out to the ocean. The famous ... read more

Just a short drive down to the coast to Gerringong, where we checked in to Werri Beach Tourist Park. The first Europeans working in the area were red cedar cutters, who were first recorded as having visited and logged in the area in 1814. The cleared land was used for dairy farming and cedar cutting died out, as the cedar trees disappeared. Dairy farming became the predominant primary industry and remains so to this day. The rolling hills in the area are typical of rich coastal dairy country down the South Coast of NSW. Gerringong was the home of the mighty Mick Cronin (Parramatta Eels), Sally Fitzgibbon (Surfer), the Sims brothers Ashton, Korbin and Tariq (St George Dragons) and Rod Wishart (St George Dragons). We drove to the local shops to find somewhere to eat lunch, ... read more

On 1 January 1901, federation of the colonies of Australia was achieved. Following a long dispute over whether Sydney or Melbourne should be the national capital, a compromise was reached: the new capital would be built in NSW, so long as it was at least 100 miles (160 km) from Sydney. The capital city was founded and formally named as Canberra in 1913. A blueprint by American architects Walter Burley Griffin and his wife Marion Mahony Griffin was selected after an international design contest, and construction commenced in 1913. Canberra is an entirely planned city, with concentric roads aligned with significant topographical landmarks such as Black Mountain, Mount Ainslie, Capital Hill and City Hill. It has been many years since we had visited our nations capital, and it was an opportune time to revisit some of ... read more

Leaving Wellington, we wanted to visit one of the local regional cities that we inevitably drove through in a rush on our way to and from Sydney, where we had moved to after we left Wellington. Orange was our chosen destination for our first stop, and we settled in to the Canobolas Tourist Park. Orange is the home of the Wiradjuri people, and in 1822, Captain Percy Simpson established a convict settlement at Blackmans Swamp, now known as Orange. The city is warm in summer and freezing in winter. It snows regularly in Orange during winter, and many a time I played winter sports there, ending up feeling like an icicle. The climate has enabled the area to be a major apple and pear producer, and a centre for cool-weather wine production. Wineries abound in the ... read more