Advertisement
One of our toughest debates about our Australian trip was whether we would head up north to Cairns, Queensland to check out the Great Barrier Reef. In the end, we decided not to go for several reasons including cost, time, and most crucially, the merits of the visit to the reef. The Great Barrier Reef has suffered a lot from overexposure to tourists, so we thought it could use a rest from dealing with the likes of us.
That left us with a little problem of how to fill a reef-sized hole in our schedule. Victoria state boasts Australia's Great Ocean Road, but we were struck by all the big green areas on our map in the central area and along the east coast of the state of New South Wales, so we decided to head north and see for ourselves.
We rented a car and left our Sydney hosts on the morning of Wednesday, April 7th. We reached the town of Gosford, only about an hour and a half north of Sydney, and got some supplies and lunch. Feeling a little tired and having no particular destination, we opted for the nearby campground of Snapper Point in the
Munmorah State Conservation Area. It proved to be a good choice. Snapper point had the 3 S's everyone looks for in a beach campground - secluded, sandy, and scenic.
After one night's stay, we decided to head further north and check out more of those green areas on our map. But first, we headed inland to check out the Hunter Valley wine region. Somewhere around Cessnock, we stopped for lunch at a beautiful restaurant set in a country garden. It was one of the nicest spots for lunch we had during our whole year long excursion. We were a bit sleepy after lunch. Eva decided she was not interested in imbibing, and owing to a head a cold, I wasn't interested either, so we continued on our way up the coast. I was lucky I wasn't my normal, wine-swallowing fiend of a self. Along our drive, we noticed the vehicles in front of us being pulled over. I pondered, albeit very briefly, the options of turning the car around or gunning it, but I did the smart thing and pulled over in my turn. Eventually, I was approached by a police officer, told to roll my window down... and
then told to blow in a tube! It was my first breathalyzer test ever, and I don't even know how to spell breathalyzer without spellcheck! I am not sure if I have a right to refuse the test (like in the US or Canada), but I know what would happen if I 'blew positive' - straight to the slammer. According to Aunt Julie, Australia has a 0 blood level alcohol limit, unlike the more lenient 0.04 you get here. If I had a pint at lunch or a taste at a winery, I may have been writing this article from an Aussie pen! Somewhat ironic, since at one point the whole continent was a penitentiary... Later in the trip I would be jarred by the contrast between the heavy-handed enforcement of road rules in the democratic commonwealth nation of Australia (police and speed warnings everywhere), and the more lenient practices I saw in the (supposedly) authoritarian People's Republic of China a few weeks later.
We arrived at a campground in the Myall Lakes National Park along Mungo Bush Road sometime around dusk. We set up our tent and prepared supper at one of their well-equipped outdoor grills. We noticed
several dogs wandering around and Eva was certain they were wild dogs - dingos. I thought that there was no way these dogs could have been wild and were of course owned by the families camping around us. Then I noticed warning signs about the dingos! We obeyed the signs, neither approaching nor feeding these wild animals. In truth, the dogs were quite skittish, but at night when 2 or 3 of them were together marching towards you on the path, they were rather kind of alarming.
The next day we didn't do much to provide for an entertaining read. We were tired and didn't even try. We decided to stay camped where we were, and took an hour long hike in the middle of the afternoon to a small fishing "village" (2 or 3 houses, really) on a river. The only exciting thing that happened was that I almost stepped on huge greenish-brown snake. However, a nice local couple I met later that day assured me that THAT snake was not poisonous, so even if I did step on it I probably wouldn't have a much better story.
We woke the next morning feeling a little more
rested and active after yesterday's inactivity. We started the day with a brief tramp over some sand dunes to the beach. Afterwards, we crossed a river on the small ferry with our car from Mungo Brush to Lake Road, and continued out of the park to the quaint little town of Buladelah. The guy in the visitor's center at Buladelah gave us some nice advice about driving around the area. He insisted that we check out Frothy Coffee at Smith's lake. Lunch was good, and my latte was delicious, but the water - from the Myall lakes watershed - was terrible. I honestly thought I was poisoned as it was the worst tasting water I had ever been served!
This was our last day along the Great Ocean Road (of New South Wales). We followed lunch with a short climb up a hill overlooking the coast, then headed back to Sydney. Fortunately our laziness paid off, and we didn't have too far to drive to make it back. We were given a feed and a warm welcome from Yan and company when we made it back around 9 that night.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.164s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 10; qc: 50; dbt: 0.0898s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb