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Published: March 6th 2010
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Now we are on the road trip from Melbourne to Sydney. We are driving in Kendra's 1993 Toyota Camry.
It's a good little car so far!
Our first night of camping, we stayed back in the same campsite we had met Kendra & Dave in. This time, we are in a tent.....?????AM I crazy? It's about 30C during the day, and this night the temperature did not drop very much!
We had set the tent up during the day, and then gone to dinner with the "Batyam" family. Upon our return to the campsite, we found the tent directly underneath one of the park lights. Hhmmmmm- I guess our skills at finding the perfect site need to be honed a bit! Luckily, these new tents do not collapse when you pull up the pegs, and we were able to pick up the whole thing, beds and all and move it to a darker location!
At about 10:30 pm, we were treated to an entertaining??? temper tantrum from an overtired 10 year old, who shared his grief about having to shower with the rest of the campground for about 1/2 hour! At about 1 am, Mark realized his air mattress was deflating.....too
bad , so sad,,, he slept on the ground- or tried to sleep.....
At 3 am, after not being able to sleep much, I heard noises outside, and upon further inspection, watched some of the less hardy party people, stagger about the campground unsteadily- wondering if they would fall ON our tent.
At 5:30 the birds woke up in earnest- and so did we. Abandoning any more grand ideas for sleep, we started the day early, and prepared to move on! Whew! Not a great initition to sleeping in a tent!
We drove from Melbourne to a place called Philip Island. Phillip Island is the nesting ground for "little penguins". IN season, these little creatures lay their eggs on the island, and leave the young chics at home while they go out hunting for food. At night, all of the adults "come home". They all emerge from the sea, battling the waves to get out of the water, and then face a long, unprotected walk up the beach back to their nests. They are called "little penguins" because they are indeed little, about 12 to 18 " inches high. It is very special to sit at the beach
and watch them appear out of the water, and waddle this great distance! Waiting on shore are all the babies- and as you return up the boardwalks, you can sometimes see the parent re-unite with their young! It was an amazing evening for us! All in all , about 800 or so make the trek each night! COOL! Unfortunately, picture taking is strictly forbidden, so you will have
to use your imaginations to fill in the details!
After a restful nite in a motel, (yippee!), we moved on to Wilson's Prom National Park. And guess what- there was a mountain to climb!!!Mark could hardly contain his glee! The whole trip was 3 1/2 hours, and mostly on a gravel path. The view from the top was once again, pretty amazing!
2 days of driving, mostly thru rain, brought us to a small town called Tathra. We were going to continue on, but found we couldn't as the road was closed due to flooding. Luckily, there was a campground with nice little cabin in it for us to stay in. The proprietor suggested we walk to the beach, where we could watch the "digger trucks" dig a whole in
the beach so the water would drain off of the road. Sounds confusing I know, but they basically opened up a pathway from the waters edge of the ocean, to the lagoon that meets the road- all in all they dug about 100 feet. All of the local kids came to wait out the rush of water that would occur when it opened up, and were surfing thru to the ocean on it. Unfortunately, we only saw pictures of this, as the process took too long and we didn't wait it out.
The next morning, the road was clear, and we were able to keep moving northwards.
We took an inland trip to Kangaroo Valley, which had its own beautiful scenery. Mark enjoyed driving the car on the road up the mountains with its hairpin turns and steep drops. A lot easier to handle than the camper in Tasmania! We stopped at Fitzroy Falls, and enjoyed the view of this 300 ft. water drop!
We drove on the Grand Pacific Drive up the coast and one of the highlights was the SeaCliff Bridge. They built the bridge because of the rocks that kept falling on the original road,close
to the cliff. Now the traffic can flow without threat of "death by falling rocks"! A great idea! We walked it from end to end, admiring the views> Another new experience: it seems the thing to do is to have a padlock enscribed with a special event and then clip it to the bridge.
We stopped at Royal National Park, which has stunning cliff side views of the coast line. Very strange beaches they have around here, when you walk on them, they actually squeak. Must be something to do
with the moisture in the sand? There is no sneeking up on someone around here! That's for sure!
When we left Melbourne, it was dry and brown, with forest fire warnings. As we drove north, it changed to much greener, and lush surroundings. There are many forests which have evidence of previous fires.
Between the rain, and the hot, humid weather, we only camped another 2 times- which did not break my heart of course!
Now we are off to Sydney, where we hope the temperature is not quite as high as it is today! Stay tuned for the details!
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LOuise
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Great to hear from you
I am printing this whole Blog & will mail to Dad J Tomorrow... I'm with you & the camping..Its a Jacobs thing!!! Enjoy