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Published: January 26th 2007
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The Three Sisiters, Katoomba
A famous Blue mountians landmark Tom and I hired a car and set out on the ambitious journey of Sydney to Bryron Bay via Broken Hill.
Day one was Sydney to Katoomba in the Bluie Mountians. First off we had to get from the hire place to the hostels Tom and I were staying at. This is easier said than done when in a strange city and a strange car. I got shouted and sworn at a few times as I stalled in the middle of junctions but there was no serious drama. Unfortunately we had only the the worst map ever as our guide and getting out of Sydney porved quite tricky. We just got on a motorway and probably doubled the lenght of our journey, but in the end we got oput of the city.
One of the motorways we had to use did not have any tellers at desks to pay money - it was all electronic and you had to have an online account. We had been told by the clerk when we got the car to only use manual tellers so this was a little worrying. Once we got to our destination I set up the online account and
paid the toll (i hope). We'll see if we get contacted by Eurocar or the NSW Motoway authority in the near future. I think I did it right anyway - have you ever seen that though, a toll motorway with nowhere to pay any money!
ANyway, the Blue Mountians are beautiful and we did a great little walk with many viewpoints. A few more veiws the next day and we were off. It was a long drive to Cobar out in the outback. Cobar is a real country town but had adequate charm with a few historic pubs and a thriving mine. We took a room above the pub and settled into some serious drinking with a group of lads that had come up from Melbourne way on a huting trip. Tom and I were almost persuaded to ditch the car and hop in their utes and shoot some pigs; it would have been a fun trip but we had our route booked already. It was a fun night in Cobar and we got a flavour of outback country life.
We whizzed straight through Wilcannia which is known to have a few problems with rural unemployment and alchohol
abuse and were also shocked at the small trickle of water also known as the mighty Darling river.
We got to Broken Hill and first headed to the ghost town of Silverton whihc is a deserted mining village. Then it was down to Kimchega NP to see the historic sheep shearing sheds and other sheep paraphanalia. This was most interesting and we learnt a lot about the olden days. Finally we saw the sun set at Broken Hill sculpture park which is quite a place, perched on a barren hill in the middle of nowhere.
The following day was an epic (well for Poms anyway) 750km drivew to Dubbo. We watched Australia win the Twenty20 cricket in the evening.
Wew visited the historic Dundullimal homestead in the moring and were impressed by the grandness of what would have been quite a fancy country house in the 1840s. Tom liked the Strangers Room where visiting strangers would stay. It was a very peacful place and it must have been quite nice I think to have lived out there back in the day.
We drove through Warrumbungle NP which was really nice on the way to Armidale. We
had two days in Armidale and spent the time exploring the numerous national parks nearby. We also saw histortic Armidale town and the University of New England founded all the way out here in the 1880s.
We also saw Cathedral Rocks NP where we did a great walk all the way to the top of the rocks, using a chain to help us up the final section, all good fun.
We had a night in Coffs Harbour and ended up in the busiest, loudest and largest hotel I've ever been in - the closest thing to it is a student union night.
We dropped the car off the following day at Ballina airport. We were able to get accomodation at Lennox Head. So we caught the bus to the seaside village of Lennox Head. It is a pretty little place and a very nice hostel. Tom and I had a swim in the sea but enjoyed swimming in the lake more. There is a dark brown-stained freshwater lake just behind the beach so you can jump in and wash all the salty water straight off. We had a nice evening in the hostel at night chatting with
a few of the other guests.
The next day we had accomodation booked in Byron Bay so we caught the local bus service to Byron in the morning.
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