Blogs from South West Rocks, New South Wales, Australia, Oceania - page 3

Day Seven: Sydney Leisurely start - caught the shuttles to the airport and parted company with Alec as soon as we got to the airport which was a bit scary - being cut loose from my lifeline in a strange city! It started well with me being offered an earlier flight, but the airport was fog bound so that turned out to be a false alarm and we left about 20 mins later than originally planned. However I managed the flights and trains well, surprised myself really. Got to the final train station and caught up with Julie whom I haven’t seen for over 20 years. We got straight on the road and headed North for Arakoon - a five hour journey through national parks and conservation areas. Very picturesque - well it would have been ... read more

The plan for today is to check out a few local attractions: the lighthouse and the old jail to be specific. The lighthouse is only a few kilometers away, and after parking we climb the hill up to the base of it. Photos show what various migrating whales look like, but we don't see any though the view of the beaches up and down the coast is spectacular. Our second stop is the jail (Gaol) which dates back to the late 1800. The area around the jail is now a campground with the last of the weekend campers enjoying the day. We watch a DVD about the jail before beginning our tour. The jail was build to house prisoners who were to work on creating a breakwater for the bay as a refuge for ships in ... read more

We arrived here around10pm and it was dark, we were searching around for a camping spot when Brad remembered that he used to camp at Trialbay Jail. This is situated next to the oldest jail in Australia but onto of the beach it was so beautiful. We set up camp and chilled out listening the crashing waves it was the best nights sleep I had had in a while. We got up well early 4.30am to be precise to watch the sunrise and to beat the ranger, as this campsite was very expensive, of course the views were great. We climbed over the rocks at sat water for the sun, this was the first sunrise I have watched since I have been over here, amazing, ith wild kangaroos bouncing around. Just down from the rocks was ... read more

Fish Rock Cave off South West Rocks didn't appear in any of the Australia Top 10 dive site listings that I looked at, but after speaking with various divers along the coast and doing some Internet research, it seemed to be a very highly regarded site. In fact, several experienced divers went so far as to say it was one of the best in the world, let alone just Australia. There were a couple of logistical problems in that the Greyhound only stopped at Kempsey, about half an hour's drive from South West Rocks, plus there was no backpacker accommodation in South West Rocks, but the main dive shop in South West Rocks solved both these problems at a stroke by offering a free pick-up from Kempsey as well as having dorms directly above the dive ... read more