Above and beyond Sydney

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Our fist mission turned out to be longer than expected. We "just" wanted to get from Melbourne to Sydney but obviously did not quite appreciate how far these cities are from each other. We drove through the Kosciuszko National Park - a name that always makes Josie smile when pronounced by the Aussies, deliberately avoiding Canberra. Finally we came close to Sydney and decided to get into this town by train and so spare Andy's nerves. That way our visit was actually quite relaxed, with no nerveracking search for a free parking space, not to mention the potential horror to drive through such a vast and unknown city. We strolled through town as you do, enjoyed some Korean food for a change - Delicious! and obviously took the ferry to Manly beach. The views of the Opera house were pretty postcard like so we were all content with our visit. A short walk through the Rocks and we were already on the way home. We did not want to overstay this beautiful city and headed straight for the Blue Mountains instead. At the information office you can get a good description of all free campsites around that area - so obviously we were there pikey style. Being tired of driving by then we decided to settle down for the afternoon and drove 11 km into the bush campsite suggested by the information office. We were lucky and had the whole place by ourselves. No wonder, as the ride was a very bumpy one in a 2 wheel drive. The next day we made our way to see the Blue Mountains and the view over the 3 Sisters was just breathtaking. Luckily we found by chance a much more accessible campsite for the night as it started raining and rained through the whole night. It could have been quite an interesting ride out of the bush on the unpaved road in our tin on wheels.

Next stop was Hawkes Nest where we found a litte hideaway only to be disturbed in the middle of the night by some kids flashing lights and beeping the horn at us. I always aks myself, why do people feel the need to do such a thing? Never mind, we drove further to Foster-Tuncurry and found the local dolphins playing in the sea. This place had something about it so we decided to stay and found a campsite for a change at diamond beach. Now this was luxury for us, a toilet near by, warm showers, a swimming pool with a spa, beach within reach and even a small kitchen we could use. HEAVEN! We totally relaxed and enjoyed all the facilities without the trouble of having to find a safe spot each night. The excitement rose when the owner of the campsite showed Andy how to find fresh bait from straight under his feet. You had to make some kind of a twist dance and suddenly you will feel a pipi shell under your sole. Free fishing bait - thank you very much! You can imagine how the days went from here. Fishing, fishing and more fishing. But, good conservation fisherman never changes his motto - and so Andy also made sure we had vegetables for dinner.

After that little extravaganza we moved on to Bellingen, a small town just a bit inland. A very nice little place with loads of trees around it and ... good cake 😉 On our way to Byron Bay we stopped at Lennox head and quite liked the tea tree lake. The whole town seemed to be very friendly and with quite a few good looking eateries. We fancied chinese that night and as it was BYO we enjoyed the last bottle of Mark's wine. Hmmmm! We felt like on holiday for a second!!! A very quick visit to Byron Bay confirmed that this was a place to party and full with pikey unfriendly signs - NO CAMPING! it could not capture our interest. We were off following the big route to Cairns and understanding now that this will take us some time there was none of it to be wasted.

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Photos

Evening entertainment
... who needs a telly ;)

In the bush - WICKED!
Blue Mountains bush camp road

Us relaxing in our luxury campsite
... on dimond beach

Comments

[Neil]

Disguise
Love the pictures and the Howard Hughes disguise - almost as good as the Refuse Collection Centrefold from N Z ! .