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Published: February 16th 2010
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This is the part of Shellharbour I love! Well we stayed such a long time in Shellharbour that I was beginning to feel like we’d been sucked into a black hole and we’d never get out! It rained, and rained, and then rained some more. Apparently the area hasn’t seen this much rain in February for quite a lot of years (and it’s only mid Feb!). Our van is canvas and folding it in all soaking wet is not do-able.
Luckily for us, we weren’t stuck in the van during these weeks of solid rain - we had plenty of friends to visit! Although, there were heaps of outings that I would've loved to have done put off because of the weather. We can return anytime we like so it's no drama that we didnt get to see the other places.
We did have a couple of mostly sunny days, and one of those days was last Wednesday - Kal’s 6th birthday. We went to Jamberoo Recreation Park (courtesy of Dad’s Christmas present to us - thanx Dad!). What a fantastic day it was! The place was almost deserted, which meant there were no queues for anything at all!
As soon as we got there the
Sydney
The view of the bridge from the ferry. birthday boy went straight to the 5 metre rock (a 5m drop into water), and got ready to DIVE straight in!!! I managed to get him to go in feet first … but it was under duress. That boy will give me a heart attack one day!
Jamberoo has some of the same rides as the water parks around - a wave pool, waterslides, donut river and a big tube slide. They also have something that the other parks DON’T have - the toboggans!!! Man they are soooo much fun. The chairlift takes you to the top of the mountain where you start the ride - this in itself is a rather exciting experience. From the top of the chairlift you can see the ‘whole world’ according to Kalahni, and yes it does feel like that. From the top of the mountain, you grab a sled, throw it on one of the two tracks and away you go. The best speed is full speed, but considering I was tandem with each of the two little guys, a mod/fast speed was great fun. When Shay and I came down, some cute little deer with huge antlers were jumping the track
Jamberoo
Kal's 6th birthday and scaring the daylights out of us. Afterward we had pizza and cake at Dad’s house with some close friends, and sung happy birthday.
The next day we day-tripped to Sydney. We drove up to Sutherland, caught up with a great old friend, left the car at his place and trained it in. Lismore doesn’t offer much in the way of public transport, so the train was pretty cool for us. In town we met up with Marty, and caught the ferry over to Manly for lunch. The ferry is a great way to see the city and the main attractions like the bridge and opera house.
Manly was fun too. Uncle Marty, offered Dakota $5 to eat a lemon wedge, skin and all. So after lunch that kept us all entertained for a good 10 minutes. As you could imagine, the facial expressions were priceless!
In the afternoon, Marty went back to work and we caught the lift up to centrepoint tower, which isn’t as freaky as one might think. The kids loved it so much we ended up spending about an hour up there! Underneath centrepoint tower we did a outback Australia Tour simulator -
Snorkelling
Another day that we caught a glimpse of sunshine. one with moving seats and a huge screen. Dakota almost vomited a few minutes into it, and after the 15 mins he was completely green! We all thought that was funny - sad, but true! It was probably partly due to the lemon eating experience that we all got so much enjoyment from previously ... lol.
Leaving Shellharbour is a bittersweet experience. Leaving means saying goodbye to my beautiful friends that I miss (even the ones I didn’t get to catch up with). I will certainly miss things like the beautiful little harbour being just a few hundred metres away. It also means that I will probably never get to be in my family home ever again as it’s on the market - there are so many memories there. On the flip side it means the next stage of our journey can begin, and we can charter into un-chartered territory for a while (for the kids at least).
The whole Shellharbour visit has been quite an interesting one - full of good friends (you know who you are - Jen, Jenny, Kylla, Nat), healing the past, unexpected surprises and looking forward to a new and bright future.
The jump
Although head first would've been soooo much more fun :? Next stop - Canberra …
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Heather Armstrong
non-member comment
Wonderful
Hi Trudy OMG your journey so far sounds fantastic! Continue to enjoy the rest of your road trip, safe driving. The photos on display so far are BRILLIANT! Keep up the good work Love Heather xxx