I've terrible blogger for the last couple of weeks, please accept my apologies! Its probably a good thing we are halfway through now, just another 6 months to go, it seems to have gone by so bloody quickly. So my last update appears to be Byron Bay, which is all the way up at the top of NSW... right now I'm in Camden, a small town just south of Sydney, so I have a lot of catching up to do. We'll do it in stages - byron to Newcastle first... I'm sure you have better things to do than read about our travels in this stupidly hot country.
Tuesday 10th
We had planned to take a detour off the main coastal route to drive along The Waterfall Way, but after a closer look at the map we realised a 6hr detour for a couple of waterfalls and big hills might not be worth it, so we stayed the night near a golf course in Urunga. We were then rudely awoken in the morning by a ranger who told us to move, as we were camping in a no camping area.
Driving to Port Macquarie, too late to go to zoo so we stayed at campsite. Pretty shitty day, mostly it rained.
Wednesday 11th
Billabong Zoo in Port Macquarie!
Stroked a koala, fed kangaroos and wallabies, saw snakes, wombats, meercats, snow leopard, red panda, lots of birds and a couple of spider monkeys. Barbara LOVED IT. We also saw an enourmous Estuarine Crocodile which looked large enough to eat a person whole. It had very big teeth.
Thursday 12th
Nelson Bay!
Sand Dunes! Lakes! Views! Home of the largest moving sand dunes in the southern Hemisphere! We considered going sandboarding, but it was decided that we'd had enough of sand, and inviting it into even more of our clothing would be uncomfortable to say the least. We did climb up to a lighthouse to get some exercise and admire the spectacular views though.
Friday 13th
Went to Newcastle!
Newcastle is a bit bigger than all the other towns we've been stopping at along the way, and its actually nice towalk around and has the added bonusof a nice beach.
There is a fairly old pool next to the sea that was made in the 40's or something, a bit like Broomhill in Ipswich, except its bigger, full of seawater, has a dramatic view of sea bashing against the nearby rocks and sandy beaches, and its full of fit young australians. So really, its nothing like Broomhill.
Watched some people getting ready for the ironman/woman competition the next day. We were interested purely for scientific and professional reasons of course.
After a few hours of science based people observation, we went back to the campsite in Stockton to get ready before hitching a ride on the ferry backto the City for a night out in a place that actually has a gay club! Unfortunately Friday is not a busy night in the city of Newcastle but we still had a good time - Barbara and Annie tried a number of interesting dance moves that ended up on the floor, and we somehow didnt get kicked out after they nearly took out a number of bystanders. (this was entirely the fault ofsome slightly pervy men who insisted on trying to get us to do the 'dirty dancing lift' repeatedly, with varying degrees of success) A fairly good night!
Saturday 14th
This morning, annie learned how to put the tent away without help! And on a hangover! We all felt pretty awful this morning so it was a quiet drive down to Sydney. We are currently staying at a campsite on the southern side of the city, as the sites in the actual city are super expensive. Its only a $6 train ride into the city from here so much easier than wrestling the van through the busy streets of Sydney and then paying $40 for parking all day.
Sydney is pretty amazing, I'll finish writing all about it in a couple of days and post it later on.
Peace out!
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