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Published: January 30th 2008
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Dear All,
sorry it's been a while, but I'm afraid they didn't fit our campervan out with the internet!
We're back in Perth now, with our travels nearly over, but we'll try and give you a recap of our travels over East!
Well, we spent another night with my Aunt and Uncle, this time in Brisbane, which they're in the process of moving to. We didn't really see a lot of Brisbane though, choosing instead to head straight down south as soon as we'd picked up out new house on wheels! Driving the van took a bit of getting used to, again we had windscreen wipers and indicators the wrong way round, but we also practically needed to two hands to change geer! But we were on our way, stopping off for a quick dip in Surfer's Paradise, before heading on to Byron Bay for the night.
Our time along the East Coast was to be characterised by rain, rain and more rain. It actually wasn't too bad the first day, and had we known what was to come we would have made more of it. As it was we wandered around Byron Bay, went up to
see the lighthouse and then looked around for campsite, after trying 3 different places we eventually got into one...and we thought the campervan was going to make accommodation more straightforward. All went well on our first evening in the van, and we managed to cook up the first of many gourmet pasta meals (better known as "slop" to the former UBES members) on our little camping stove. But we fell badly at the second hurdle of making our bed! Now I should have mentioned that the guy who hired the can to us was new/incompetent and didn't seem to have a clue how anything worked, but when he said the little table lies down to form the bed, we figured it would all be straightforward, and it would have been if we'd known there was a third bit hidden away down the back. Anyway after spending half an hour trying to work it out, we eventually came to the conclusion that there was a bit missing. We improvised for the night using the plastic camping table that we'd also hired. It wasn't the best solution, but was ok if you didn't kneel in the gaps! We were cursing and planned
to ring and complain the next day, but thankfully as we were packing up the next morning we discovered the illusive bit of bed and avoided the embarassment of having to be told about it over the phone!
We woke that second morning to lots of rain, so decided to get back on the road and head down to Coffs Harbour. In between the rain we managed another swim in the ocean, and we found a nice caravan park between two rivers enetering the sea. Unfortunately this also meant it was very wet underfoot and we needed the help of another guy to push the van out of it's spot the next morning. No trip to Coffs Harbour is complete without a visit to the "Big Banana", but once accomplished we headed inland to explore Dorrigo National Park.
Dorrigo is a beautiful forest, it's a sub tropical rainforest, so was similar in some ways to Daintree, but was drier, a less established canopy and lovely tall trees. We did the full 3 hour walking circuit, which would have been fantastic except that half way through I managed to tread on a dead stinging leaf lying in the path.
I knew it was just the leaf as we'd seen several signs warning about them in the park, but that didn't make it hurt any less. Apparently the leaf has little needles that inject a load of formic acid into you. Ow is all I can say. We returned to the discovery centre, which said it offered first aid, and I was advised to use some celloptape to try and get the stinging stuff out, and then pretty much just put up with it. It would pass after a while, but then has a habit of randomly recurring! For me it hurt for the rest of the day, but was gone and so I thought I'd got away with it, but unfortunatly it came back just the other day - over a week after it happened - all very strange.
Anyway, enough moaning! We liked Dorrigo but decided to head back out towards the coast staying at Bellingen (pronounced inge not ing which we only found out several days after we'd left the place) for the night. We camped in a show ground, which was also hosting a creative workshops weekend, so there were alll sorts of people sharing
the showers with us! That night we treated ourselves and dined in the award-winning bistro, having a little bit too much wine before finding our way back to the van for the night. The next day it absolutely poured down the whole day, so we just drove, eventually stopping in Booti Booti National Park for the night, mainly because it was getting dark. Booti Booti, or RIP OFF campsite as we refer to it, was pretty basic. We had to pay for parking and camping leaving our money in a little safe box (which added the annoyance as we probably could have got away with not paying), it didn't have electricity and the showers cut off after 3 mins and didn't come on for another 4 mins as a water saving measure (yes the whole rain for the previous 5 years seemed to fall just when we were there!).
From Booti Booti we headed to Nelson Bay, where despite the persistent rain we did do a little walk. We had lunch on the way at a winery to cheer us up, after the abysmal weather. From Nelson Bay we headed down to Valentine where my Uncle Graeme put us up for a third time! My cousin Lindsay came over too and we had a great time eating Italian take-away (yes they do that here, not just pizza, but proper Italian meals) and again drinking far too much wine! Despite having now got the hang of putting together our bed in the van, it was nice to sleep in a proper bed for the night and not have to go outside to use the toilet!
We'll tell you about the rest of the road trip in the next blog(s) very soon.
Jenny
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